Two Cases of Hepatic Caudate Lobe Metastasis Originating from Colorectal Carcinoma

Takeshi Tono, Hiroki Ohzato, Mutsumi Fukunaga, Hirohide Maruyama, Kazuomi Kan, Haruhiko Imamoto, Keishi Yamazaki and Yuichi Takatsuka

Department of Surgery, Kansai Rosai Hospital

The clinical feature of hepatic caudate lobe metastasis originating from colorectal carcinoma remains unclear. We recently experienced two cases of this disease. The first patient is a 69 year-old woman who underwent extended left lobectomy and total caudate lobectomy with partial resection of the inferior vena cava (IVC) for a large tumor that occupied the entire caudate lobe with infiltration to the IVC. Although the postoperative course was uneventful, she had recurrent disease in liver, lung and bone, and is now undergoing chemoradiotherapy 13 months after the operation. The second case is a 56 year-old man, who underwent partial resection of the caudate lobe for a metastatic lesion limited to the Spiegel lobe. He is disease free 7months after operation. There have been only 8 reported cases of metastatic caudate lobe cancer from colorectal primaries until the present in Japanese literatures. We analyzed the clinical feature of this disease and concluded as follows: 1) Precise diagnosis of the caudate lobe lesion in an early stage is difficult. 2) Median survival time is 25 months, suggesting that aggressive surgical treatment may prolong survival. 3) The majority of postoperative recurrence sites is the residual liver, which is similar to postoperative findings of liver metastasis in other than tha caudate lobe.

Key words
liver metastasis from colorectal carcinoma, caudate lobe, hepatectomy for liver metastasis

Reprint requests
Takeshi Tono Department of Surgery, Kansai Rosai Hospital 3-1-69 Inabaso, Amagasaki, 660-8511 JAPAN

Accepted
February 24, 1999

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