Abstract
Context: Lung cancers are known to metastasize to unusual sites. Despite this knowledge often times the diagnosis of a primary lung cancer gets delayed especially when the patient presents without respiratory symptoms. Case Report: The patient discussed in our review is a 47-year-old female, smoker who had presented to several hospitals with months of headache, nausea and intermittent episodes of vomiting. She was noted to have hypernatremia due to diabetes insipidus and a pituitary lesion on her magnetic resonance images. The pituitary mass on biopsy was found to represent a metastatic focus from a primary lung adenocarcinoma. Conclusion: Clinicians should be aware of malignancies that are well known to metastasize to the posterior pituitary. Conversely, since not every patient presents with symptoms of metastasis, there is a need to recognize the clinical syndromes (e. g., diabetes insipidus-like symptoms or more subtle symptoms like cranial nerve palsies) associated with potential metastasis to the pituitary.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 476-479 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | North American Journal of Medical Sciences |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 30 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Adenocarcinoma
- Adults
- Diabetes insipidus
- Humans
- Pituitary neoplasms
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine(all)