[Pneumothorax Secondary to Pulmonary Metastasis of Angiosarcoma of the Scalp;Report of a Case]

Abstract

Angiosarcoma has been reported as a rare case, having high potential of hematogeneous lung metastasis and then developing to pneumothorax with ease. The patient was a 74-year-old man afflicted with a malignant hemangio endothelioma (MHE) of the scalp. His MHE of the scalp was resected and skin grafting was made, then, he was administered docetaxel hydrate intravenously as adjuvant setting. Three years after, he complainted left chest pain and dyspnea, so his chest Xp was checked up and showed left pneumothorax. Chest computed tomography revealed multiple thin walled cavities of right and left lung and bullae with slightly thick walled cavity at apex legion of the left lung. We resected bullae with tumor of the left apex legion under video assisted thoracic surgery. After operation, He was administerd ricombinant interleukin-2 intravenously in order to control lung metastasis of the scalp, but his condition deteriorated and 6 months after pneumothorax he died. The average survival time from the 1st pneumothorax episode was only 4.7 months. He kept a good activities of daily living without reccurrence of pneumothorax by operation, so we thought that the operaion for pneumothorax with MHE was one option for therapy.