[Multimodality treatment of adrenal ganglioneuroblastoma: a case report]

We present adult adrenal ganglioneuroblastoma with giant regional lymph node metastasis. The patient was a 21-year-old male, who had a left adrenal tumor diagnosed by ultrasonography incidentally. He was moderately developed and physical examination was almost normal. Blood pressure was within the normal range. Only the value of the vanilmandelic acid, which was 68.7 mg/day, in the urine was abnormal. Other laboratory data were almost normal. Neither chemical nor physical hormonal disorders were present. We carried out the radical surgical treatment by trans-thoracoabdominal approach under the diagnosis of left adrenal neuroblastoma. Pathological diagnosis was ganglioneuroblastoma. After the operation, the patient received both systemic chemotherapy of vincristine and cyclophosphamide and immunotherapy of OK-432 by subcutaneous administration. Furthermore, 40 Gy of the regional irradiation of 60Co to the operative space after the surgery was performed. At eight months after the operation, he is alive with no evidence of disease. Ganglioneuroblastoma is a neuroblastic tumor including neuroblastoma, which commonly occurs in childhood. The prognosis of the neuroblastic tumors which occur either in the adrenal gland of a young child or in an older child is poor. On the other hand, the biological activity of the adult neuroblastic tumors is different from that of the pediatric neuroblastic tumors. In the adult, the adrenal ganglioneuroblastoma does not always have a poor prognosis. The multimodality treatment which we performed is effective for the neuroblastic tumor. Ultrasonography is both effective and adequate for the screening of the retroperitoneal lesion such as in our case.