Abstract
A rare case of a successfully resected pancreatic metastasis of a synovial sarcoma is described. The case involved a 40-year-old woman. There were previous histories of undergoing a wide resection of synovial sarcoma in the right thigh in September 1981, and surgical resections for repeated local reccuren-ce (4 times) and lung metastasis (2 times) thereafter. In January 1993 the patient was admitted to the hospital because of epigastralgia. Examinations revealed a solitaly tumor at the pancreas head 5cm in diameter. A diagnosis of pancreatic metastasis of the synovial sarcoma was made. Pylorus preserving pancreoduodenostomy was performed. The patient was free from the disease 13 months after the operation.
Synovial sarcoma often recur localy and metastasize distantly, but its metastasis to the pancreas has been rarely reported and no cases of succesfully resected such pancreatic metastasis have been seen. Since metastatic pancreatic tumor often lacks any symptoms, presents difficulty in imaging diagnosis, and is liable to occur as multiple metastasis, there were few reports describing its successful surgical resection. However, in this case the tumor was located in a limited lesion of the pancreas, its primary lesion had been cured, and there were no more metastasis in the other organs, the metastatic tumor was succesfuly resected.
