Colonic adenocarcinoma with metastasis to the gingiva

Metastatic tumors involve the oral cavity, and the most common primary sites are the breast and lung. Most cases affect the mandible and maxilla in that order, although some of them can be located in the soft perioral tissues. We report the case of a 62-year-old male who had been diagnosed with sigmoid adenocarcinoma with nodal and liver metastasis, who presented 6 months later with a gingival polypoid tumor, at first considered as a primary neoplasm of gingiva, that was diagnosed in a biopsy as metastatic intestinal adenocarcinoma. The histological evaluation is essential to separate adenocarcinoma from the commoner in this site squamous cell carcinoma, and the immunohistochemical techniques are useful to distinguish metastatic tumor versus primary adenocarcinoma from the minor salivary glands of the area. The intraoral spread of a disseminated neoplasm is generally a sign of bad prognosis, although a longer survival can be expected if a radical surgical treatment of a solitary metastasis is carried out.