Asynchronous Liver Metastasis From Rectal Carcinoid Less Than 2cm in Diameter and limited to sm Invasion

Yasuhiko Nagano, Noriyuki Kawaura, Goro Matsuda, Toru Kubota, Kuniya Tanaka, Itaru Endo, Hitoshi Sekido, Shinji Togo and Hiroshi Shimada

Second Department of Surgery, Yokohama City University School of Medicine

A 71-year-old woman admitted to evaluate a liver tumor was found by ultrasonography to have a homogeneously hyperechoic mass of 7×5 cm in diameter from anterior to median segments. Her history included rectal polyps treated by transanal resection 4 years earlier at an other hospital. The mass appeared as a low-density tumor with ring-like enhancement in the early dynamic computed tomography (CT) phase. Angiography showed a homogeneous tumor stain, leading to a diagnosis of liver cell adenoma that we treated with central bisegmentectomy. The histological diagnosis was carcinoid tumor, farther shown by histological findings of the rectal polyp, to be a rectal carcinoid 1.1 cm in diameter with submucosal (sm) invasion. The final diagnosis of this liver tumor was metastasis from a rectal carcinoid. Liver metastasis from a rectal carcinoid less than 2 cm in diameter and limited to the submucosal layer is rare, with only 12 cases, including ours, reported in the Japanese literature.

Key words
rectal carcinoid, liver metastasis, sm invasion

Reprint requests
Yasuhiko Nagano Second Department of Surgery, Yokohama City University School of Medicine, 3-9 Fukuura, Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, 236-0004 JAPAN

Accepted
December 12, 2001

To read the PDF file you will need Abobe Reader installed on your computer.