You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Unusual presentation of more common disease/injury
Case report
Intracardiac metastasis from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
  1. Suha Abu Khalaf1,
  2. Talha Riaz2,
  3. Abdallah Mansour1 and
  4. Donald Doll2
  1. 1Department of Internal Medicine, University of Missouri System, Columbia, Missouri, USA
  2. 2Department of Hematology/Medical Oncology, University of Missouri System, Columbia, Missouri, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Abdallah Mansour; dr-91{at}live.com

Abstract

Cardiac metastasis from head and neck cancer is an extremely rare and devastating condition with an abysmal prognosis. Most of our knowledge about this condition is from case reports and series. We present a case of squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsils that was complicated by embolic stroke and critical limb ischemia that were found to be secondary to intracardiac metastasis. We believe that this condition is under-reported; hence, we conducted a thorough review of the literature to highlight the characteristics and previous therapeutic experiences with various presentations of cardiac metastasis from head and neck carcinoma. Clinicians are encouraged to report their experience with evaluating and managing this type of metastasis.

  • head and neck cancer
  • stroke
  • cancer - see oncology

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2020-234691

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors SAK conceived the idea and wrote the manuscript along with AM. TR reviewed and edited the manuscript. AM reviewed literature, helped with writing and editing the manuscript. DD supervised the process and reviewed the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Next of kin consent obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.