Bowel perforation secondary to metastatic lung cancer: Report of two cases with literature review

INTRODUCTION: Gastrointestinal metastases from pulmonary neoplasm represent a rare but potentially fatal pathology that can complicate the disease in most advanced stages; this is a rare but well-known phenomenon in Literature and small intestine is the most common metastatic site. Generally these are patients with a known or surgically treated pulmonary neoplasm; the onset of pulmonary neoplastic disease with a symptomatic intestinal metastasis is to be considered extremely rare. PRESENTATION OF CASES: We report two cases of small intestine perforation from pulmonary metastasis; diagnosis was made at the time of exploratory laparotomy and the operation was in one patient the resection of the perforated bowel and in the second a resection and an intestinal bypass to overcome the stenosis caused by the metastatic masses. In the postoperative period, a patient died of pulmonary complications, the second was dismissed, but survival was only three months. DISCUSSION: Intestinal metastasis of a pulmonary tumor is a rare occurrence but must be suspected in acute abdominal syndrome in a patient with a diagnosed pulmonary neoplasia. CONCLUSION: Emergency surgical treatment of abdominal metastases of a lung cancer is mandatory but prognosis is extremely unfavorable. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of IJS Publishing Group Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.