Abstract
A 58 year-old man with right renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and a tumor in the pancreas head underwent right nephrectomy and pylorus preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy simultaneously. The tumor in the pancreas head showed marked enhancement in dynamic CT and dynamic MRI studies. The tumor did not show FDG accumulation on PET at all, whereas a slight accumulation of FDG was observed on RCC. Therefore, the tumor in the pancreas head was diagnosed as a non-functional endocrine tumor. Pathohistological findings revealed that the tumor was a solitary metastasis from RCC. It has been difficult to distinguish a hypervascular tumor in the pancreas from a metastatic tumor from RCC. Since even FDG-PET, an extremely useful imaging modality for metastasis examinations, could not identify as metastasis from RCC, we should be careful about the differential diagnosis in cases with advanced RCC.
