Surgical resection of pulmonary metastases from gastric cancer

There are no reports concerning surgical treatment on pulmonary metastases from gastric cancer. The aims of this study were to characterize patients with pulmonary metastasis from gastric cancer and to determine the efficacy of surgical therapy.

Between 1977 and 1993, 3,076 patients underwent curative resection for gastric cancer. Among them, four patients (0.1%) with pulmonary metastases from gastric cancer underwent pulmonary resection.

All four patients had advanced gastric cancers involving regional lymph nodes far from the primary gastric lesion. The median tumor-free interval after the initial gastrectomy was 32.0 months (range: 19-48 months). All patients underwent a lobectomy for a solitary pulmonary lesion. Although transthoracic fine-needle aspiration cytology revealed adenocarcinoma in all cases, none of them were definitely diagnosed as metastasis from gastric cancer preoperatively. The diagnosis was obtained after pulmonary resection. All patients received postoperative chemotherapy or radiotherapy, or both. However, they all subsequently developed systematic metastases. The time interval to recurrence after pulmonary resection ranged from 6 to 36 months and they were all dead at a median follow-up of 24.3 months after the pulmonary resection.

An aggressive surgical approach was not warranted in patients with isolated resectable pulmonary metastases from gastric cancer. However, the possibility of surgical treatment could not be eliminated because surgery is the only diagnostic method for a solitary pulmonary nodule when there is some doubt about the diagnosis of primary or secondary lung cancer in patients with gastric cancer.