Case report: metastatic small-cell lung carcinoma of the external auditory canal

We report the case of a 73-year-old man who developed metastatic small-cell lung cancer to the bony external auditory canal (EAC). The patient had only recently been diagnosed with his primary carcinoma. The metastasis presented as a bulky, fleshy, bleeding mass in the right EAC. Biopsy of the metastasis revealed that its histologic characteristics were identical to those of the primary. This case is of interest because this was a unique type of metastasis to the EAC. Although there are reports in the literature of lung cancer and even small-cell cancer metastasizing to the temporal bone, we could find no previously published report of a small-cell lung carcinoma metastasizing to the EAC.