Disseminated mucormycosis in a case of metastatic carcinoma

A 50-year-old white woman who underwent bilateral mastectomy for fibrocystic disease of the breast in 1974 and laminectomy for lumbar disc fusion in 1979, was diagnosed early in 1980 at Roswell park Memorial Institute as a case of metastatic anaplastic carcinoma. She was started on platinum combination therapy, but in the course of her treatment she became increasingly jaundiced, then semi-comatose and died suddenly two months after the diagnosis of carcinoma. Histopathologic examinations revealed undifferentiated small-cell carcinoma in the lung, liver, lymph nodes, and bone. Mucormycosis, characterized by the presence of broad coenocytic hyphae associated with thrombosis, infarction, and necrosis, was unexpectedly discovered at postmortem examination in the brain, lung, and heart. The etiologic agent, Absidia corymbifera, was isolated from a lung specimen and was identified by its morphologic characteristics and by the formation of zygospores in crosses with a compatible tester strain of the mating type (-).