ABSTRACT

The most common distant metastasis of breast cancer are detected in liver, lung, bone and brain. However, atypical organ metastasis is not uncommon. Isolated pancreas metastasis can be seen rarely as well. There have been only seven cases described in the literature. Here, we report extremely a rare case of breast cancer, which metastasizes to the pancreas tail. The patient has diagnosed as breast cancer four years ago, gradual increases in serum levels of CEA and Ca15-3 were detected (129 (0-4,3ng/ml) and 84 U/ml (0-25 U/ml) respectively) in routine follow-up. Although she had no symptoms, contrast-enhanced abdominal computerized tomography (CT) scan revealed a mass of 81mm x 79mm x 68mm, with a necrozis in the tail of the pancreas. No other metastatic sites were detected by gastric endoscopy, lung CT scan or bone scintigraphy. Percutan transabdominal biopsy from tail of pancreas was showed that metastasis of breast carcinoma. We propose that, when an increase is detected in tumor markers, such as CA15-3 or CEA, without any detectable metastasis in common metastatic organs, should be investigated other atypical metastatic areas such as pancreas.