Hepatoid pancoast tumor. A case report and review of the literature

A 48-year-old male patient presented with a Pancoast tumor of the right lung and a serum alpha-fetoprotein (αFP) at 39,000 ng/ml. Alpha-fetoprotein is a tumor marker found elevated in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), germ cell or stromal tumors of the ovary and nonseminomatous testicular cancer. Occasionally, this tumor marker may rise in non-neoplastic conditions such as cirrhosis and hepatitis and only exceptionally in rare cancers with hepatoid differentiation. We present our case report and review the English literature for αFP-producing lung carcinomas. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report in the literature of an αFP producing Pancoast tumor.