Abstract. Mucinous adenocarcinoma is an unusual histological type of lung cancer, and its clinicopathological feature is distinctive from that of other histopathological types of lung adenocarcinoma. Mucinous adenocarcinoma has a mucus-producing function, which explains its name. The present study reports a rare case of a mucus-producing adenocarcinoma of the lung. A 60-year-old Chinese female patient was diagnosed with mucinous adenocarcinoma of the lung, which manifested as respiratory symptoms, including fever, cough and expectoration. The patient received thoracic exploratory operation and right pneumonectomy, since the above respiratory symptoms seriously affected her daily life, and other inspections could not establish the diagnosis. Histopathology revealed no mutations in epidermal growth factor receptor. The patient received adjuvant chemotherapy using taxol and cisplatin. However, metastases in the left lung were detected 7 months after the operation. Pemetrexed and cisplatin were used as the second-line treatment. The patient survived 3 years after the initial diagnosis. The present study reports a rare mucus-producing adenocarcinoma of the lung, which is of bad prognosis. Therefore, further studies on this type of cancer are urgently required.
IntroductionLung cancer is the leading cancer in terms of mortality and morbidity in the world, and adenocarcinomas are common histological types of lung cancer (1,2). The International Society for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the American Thoracic Society and the European Respiratory Society jointly published a histological classification of lung adenocarcinomas in 2011 (3). The main interest of such classification is its prognostic value, since histological type is closely associated with clinical, pathological and molecular parameters (4,5).Mucinous adenocarcinoma is the rarest type of lung adenocarcinoma (6). According to a recent classification (3), mucinous adenocarcinoma includes mucinous adenocarcinoma in situ, minimally invasive adenocarcinoma and invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma. These tumors tend to present KRAS mutations and commonly lack thyroid transcription factor-1 expression, and computed tomography (CT) usually indicates nodules of consolidation with air bronchograms that are generally multinodular and multilobular in distribution (5). Mucinous adenocarcinoma of the lung is morphologically characterized by tall columnar cells with abundant cytoplasm that contain varying amounts of mucin (6,7). Mucus secreted by cancer cells can commonly be discharged as sputum. However, if airway obstruction happens, obstructive pneumonia occurs immediately, since the mucus fails to drain (8-10).
Case reportThe patient was a 60-year-old female. On October 2011, the patient developed fever, with a temperature fluctuation between 37.5 and 39.0˚C, in addition to cough and yellow sputum, but no chills or shivering, abdominal pain or diarrhea, sore throat, urinary frequency or urgency, or dysuria. In the Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a CT scan of t...