Discussion
Diagnosis With Brief Discussion
- Diagnosis
- Airspace metastasis of from pancreatic cancer
- Radiologic Findings
- Chest radiograph shows no abnormality. Chest CT shows focal subpleural airspace opacity in LLL with slow, gradual enlargement over 2 years.
- Brief Review
- PET-CT scan shows avid FDG uptake in the left lower lobe lung lesion and focal FDG uptake in the head portion of the pancreas consistent with pancreatic head cancer with airspace metastasis in LLL.
Lung metastases from pancreatic adenocarcinoma are not uncommon, with an incidence of 27% to 50%. Cancer cell grow by replacing alveolar epithelial cells in a fashion mimicking lepidic predominant adenocarcinoma.
The airspace pattern is classified into the following four types: (a) airspace nodules (b) parenchymal consolidation (c) focal or extensive ground glass opacity (d) nodules with a halo sign.
These features are all indistinguishable from the radiological features of lepidic predominant adenocarcinoma.
- References
- 1. Efe Ozkan et al. Pictorial essay: multimodality imaging of metastases from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Clin Imaging. 2010 Jul-Aug;34(4):277-87
- Keywords
- Lung, airspace metastasis, metastasis from pancreatic cancer,