Metastatic esophageal tumors from distant primary lesions: report of three esophagectomies and study of 1835 autopsy cases

Three cases of esophagectomy for secondary esophageal carcinomametastasized from the ovary, breast and lung are reported. Long-termsurvival, 14 and 4 years, after esophagectomy was achieved in two patients.The intervals between surgery for primary cancer and dysphagia onset inthese two patients were 16 and 7 years, respectively. An aggressivesurgical approach appears to be the therapeutic procedure of choice formetastatic esophageal carcinoma when the primary tumor growth rate issuspected to be slow. Autopsy data on 1835 cases revealed 112 (6.1%) hadmetastasis to the esophagus. The lung was the most common primarytumor-bearing organ and the diffusely infiltrative type was the most commonesophageal tumor observed macroscopically which corresponded to thefindings in our three patients. When an esophageal stricture with normalmucosa is encountered, a metastatic tumor must be taken into consideration.