[Esophageal cancer developing 13 years after radiotherapy of lung cancer]

This paper reports on an autopsied case manifesting an esophageal cancer that had developed 13 years after radiotherapy for lung cancer. The patient was a 61-year-old man. He was found to have a squamous cell carcinoma of the right lower bronchus with a swelling of the mediastinal and left supraclavicular lymph nodes in July of 1973. He received 60 Gy of irradiation in the right lung, the mediastinum, and the left supraclavicular region. Later, after doing well until August of 1986, a squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus was found at the upper intrathoracic site. Thus, he also received additional radiotherapy but died of pneumonia after this local recurrence 7 months later. At autopsy, no local recurrence of the primary lung cancer was found. The site of esophageal cancer was far from that of the primary lung cancer though it was included in the previous treatment ports. This suggests the possibility that the primary esophageal cancer had been induced by therapeutic irradiation. So far as we know, this is the first report of esophageal cancer that may have developed after irradiation for lung cancer.