42-Month Survival following Chemotherapy for Small-Cell Rectal Carcinoma

Norio Yukawa¹⁾, Makoto Akaike¹⁾, Yukio Sugimasa¹⁾, Shoji Takemiya¹⁾, Yohichi Kameda²⁾ and Toshio Imada³⁾

¹⁾Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Kanagawa Cancer Center
²⁾Department of Pathlogy, Kanagawa Cancer Center
³⁾The First Department of Surgery, Yokohama City University, School of Medicine

A 50-year-old woman who undergoing uterectomy with extended lymph node dissection and local radiation therapy was admitted for constipation. She was found to have rectal carcinoma by barium enema examination and colonoscopy. Low-anterior resection was not curative due to paraaortic lymph node metastasis. Pathological diagnosis was small-cell carcinoma. Postoperative chemotherapy was conducted using CDDP and VP-16. Computed tomography (CT) 9 months postoperatively revealed that the paraaortic lymph nodes swelling was disappeared, and she has continued disease-free 42 months (3.5 years) after resection. Small-cell carcinoma of the rectum is a rare disease with an extremely poor prognosis, although, in our case, chemotherapy proved effective.

Key words
small cell carcinoma, rectum, chemotherapy

Reprint requests
Norio Yukawa Department of Gastroenterological Center, Yokohama City University Medical Center 4-57 Urafune-cho, Minami-ku, Yokohama 232-0024 JAPAN

Accepted
May 1, 2002

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