First report of hepatic lobectomy for metastatic carotid body tumor

Hepatic lobectomy for metastatic colon cancer is well accepted, yielding a 30-35% five-year survival with a low mortality of less than 5%. Less commonly is hepatic resection for selected metastasis from other organs. We report here what we believe is the first hepatic lobectomy for a metastatic carotid body tumor. The patient was a 41-year-old white female who presented with a large incapacitating hepatic metastasis and an incidental lung metastasis from a carotid body tumor resected 12 years earlier. The patient underwent left hemihepatectomy and local lymph node dissection at our university. Twenty-one months after the operation the patient is asymptomatic and has no sign of tumor reoccurrence . We discuss here the clinical features, pathophysiology, treatment and the surgical literature of this rare entity. This is yet another example of the effectiveness of hepatic resection for noncolonic metastasis (26 references).