Abstract
A 61-year-old female was admitted to our hospital for esophageal cancer treatment. Esophagectomy with 2-field lymphadenectomy was performed. Postoperative findings revealed the lesion was a poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma invading into the diaphragm and there were no carcinoma cells on the surgical margins. Eight months after surgery, a recurrence was suspected by the presence of tumors at the pericardia, right axillary lymph node and around the descending aorta. The patient was re-admitted for chemotherapy and administrated fluorouracil and cisplatin 4 days after admission. After 7 days, she complained of dysphagia. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy showed no abnormal lesion that could cause the symptom. Computed tomography revealed massive progression of the pericardial tumor, bilateral pleural effusion and congested liver. Echocardiography showed the diffuse pericardial tumor caused restriction of ventricular dilation and hemodynamics of constrictive pericarditis. The patient died 29 days after re-admission. Autopsy revealed squamous cell carcinoma involving the mediatinum and pericardium. The pericardium was completely full of cancer tissue but no fluid. We concluded that the direct cause of death was neoplastic constrictive pericarditis.
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Conflict of Interest
Saeko Kushida, Naoki Takekawa, Hiroaki Sawai, Aya Sakai, Takuya Mimura, Hidetaka Tsumura, Takeshi Sakamoto, Kazutoshi Tobimatsu, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Ikuya Miki, Masahiro Tsuda and Hideto Inokuchi declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5).
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Informed consent was obtained from the patient in the case report.
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Kushida, S., Takekawa, N., Mimura, T. et al. Constrictive pericarditis caused by a pericardial-occupying tumor due to esophageal cancer . Clin J Gastroenterol 7, 243–246 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-014-0489-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-014-0489-z