Frontiers in Oncology (Oct 2024)

Case report: Pancreatic metastasis from small-cell lung cancer appears as primary G2 pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor on combined contrast PET imaging with three probes

  • Huimin Zhang,
  • Jie Gao,
  • Xiaofeng Cong,
  • Chen Chen,
  • Jiaxin Yin,
  • Wenji Xiong,
  • Ziling Liu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2024.1403260
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14

Abstract

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Pancreatic metastasis is a rare malignant tumor; when it comes to multiple cancers, it may be a challenge to identify the primary lesion of new pancreatic metastases. With the continuous advancement of imaging technology, the PET/computed tomography (CT) has been widely used because of its high diagnostic accuracy and non-invasiveness. However, in the present case, the patient had history of limited small-cell lung carcinoma and prostatic cancer; the combined application of the three kinds of PET/CT was used to identify the new metastases of pancreatic and bone metastases, which suggested a high probability of primary G2 pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor with bone metastases. After the needle biopsy, samples were confirmed by diagnostic pathology as small-cell lung cancer metastasizing to the pancreas and bone. The results of our case suggests the irreplaceability of pathology and possibility of misdiagnosis by PET/CT; moreover, it also supplements clinical data for second primary cancers after small-cell lung cancer.

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