Adenocarcinoma of the minor duodenal papilla: report of a case

We report a case of adenocarcinoma of the minor duodenal papilla, a rare type of duodenal neoplasm. A 76-year-old man with a history of surgery for rectal cancer and gastric cancer was referred to us after a follow-up upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed an abnormal elevation in the minor duodenal papilla. The pathological diagnosis of a biopsy specimen was adenocarcinoma. Preoperative examination of other organs revealed a tumor in the ascending colon, which was also identified as adenocarcinoma. We performed synchronous pancreatoduodenectomy and ileocecal resection with lymph node dissection. Histopathological examination of the resected specimen revealed that the papilla tumor arose from the duodenal mucosa and infiltrated the submucosa of the duodenal wall, but not the pancreatic parenchyma. Based on these findings, we diagnosed primary adenocarcinoma of the minor duodenal papilla. To our knowledge, this is only the sixth such case reported in the English-language literature, and we review all six cases after this case report.