Subacute pulmonary hypertension and systemic tumour embolism from cervical cancer

Venous tumour embolization is not unusual in malignant disease (1-3) usually in the form of individual cells or small clumps. Malignant cells in the pulmonary vasculature are therefore not an uncommon finding, especially in patients with abdominal neoplasms (4-7). Arterial emboli from a malignant tumour are, however, rare (8, 9), particularly peripheral ones (9, 10) and those sufficiently large to cause organ infarction. An unusual case of pulmonary and widespread systemic tumour embolization from carcinoma of the cervix is described in which systemic dissemination of tumour emboli had apparently resulted from transpulmonary passage, without the development of pulmonary metastases.