An unusual site of metastasis: splenic metastastasis from a colon cancer

Abstract

Splenic metastasis from colorectal cancers is a very rare occurrence. Few cases have been reported in the literature. We report herein an additionnal case of metachronous splenic metastasis from adenocarcinoma of the sigmoid colon, 3 years after the diagnosis of the primary tumor. A 62-year old woman presented for regular follow-up after colectomy for sigmoid colon adenocarcinoma. A computed tomography-scan found two splenic metastatic nodules for which splenectomy had been performed. The histological analysis of the resected spleen showed a well-differentiated metastatic adenocarcinoma from colon. The patient recovered well after surgery, and 10 months after, she had no signs of the disease.

When a House Is Not a Home: A Survey of Antimetastatic Niches and Potential Mechanisms of Disseminated Tumor Cell Suppression

“…Spleen metastases of epithelial tumors are regarded as rare, with metastatic growths accounting for 1.1-4% of all fatal cases (3,(99)(100)(101)(102). Warren & Davis (103) discovered splenic metastases in 46 of 1,140 cases (4%), and in Willis's (29) 500 necropsies, he found discrete splenic metastases in only 14 (3%).…”

Isolated splenic metastases from rectal carcinoma 5 years after surgery: Case report

“…[15] The reason for the low incidence of splenic metastases is unclear, and several hypotheses have been proposed from anatomic, physiological, and immunological perspectives: there is an acute angle at the beginning of the splenic artery that restricts tumor cell metastasis to the spleen; the spleen prevents tumor cells implanting into vascular endothelial cells through rhythmic contraction; lymphocytes and macrophages can prevent tumor cell implantation and proliferation in the spleen, or can inhibit tumor cell survival; and the parenchyma of the spleen lacks the input of lymphatic vessels, and only a few rare lymphatic vessels are confined to the splenic capsule. [16][17][18] This article introduces a case of heterogeneous and isolated splenic metastasis. I believe that this tumor is formed by lymphatic metastasis.…”

Case report of isolated synchronous multiple splenic metastases from rectal cancer: A case report and brief review of the literature

“…In this study, we analyzed 39 previously published cases (22 males, 17 females; age range, 33 to 84 years; mean, 64 years) of isolated splenic metastasis derived from CRC (Table 1). [5,8,10,14,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Among them, 35 cases were metachronous metastasis and only 4 cases were synchronous metastasis. Interestingly, in terms of splenic lesions, there were only 4 cases of multiple metachronous splenic metastases, and most cases [34] were solitary.…”