A 59-year-old Chinese woman was admitted to the hospital with the chief complaint of a progressively enlarging mass in the left thoracic wall over the past seven months. At the initial examination, the tumor slightly protruded from the chest wall with the 2 cm in diameter, and gradually grew over in the past several months. In one month ago, she underwent a percutaneous transthoracic needle biopsy of the mass in another hospital. Following the puncture, the tumor promptly increased significantly in size, impacting blood flow to the left arm. On this admission, we conducted a physical examination and palpated the soft painless left lateral chest wall large mass with the 9 cm in diameter. She denied smoking history and had no family history of lung cancer. A review of her systems was noncontributory. The results of a peripheral blood count, baseline serum chemistry screening, and urinalysis were normal on admission, as were tumor biomarker tests and a purified protein derivative test for tuberculosis.
Enhanced chest computed tomography (CT) with three-dimensional reconstruction of the ribs showed an enormous soft tissue mass in the left chest wall (Figure 1), which extended into the left lung and mediastinum, exerted pressure on the heart, skewing it to the right, and had eroded the middle portion of the fifth rib. The density of the tissue mass was uneven and a necrotic area was visible. The maximum cross-sectional diameter of the tumor mass was 13.3 x 15.7 cm2. Moreover, an ECT bone scan also demonstrated the destruction of the middle of the fifth rib. In additional, a CT scan of her abdomen and magnetic resonance imaging of her brain were all normal. Her bronchial tree also appeared normal on bronchoscopic examination, with no indication of malignancy in the biopsy and washings procured.
After anesthesia and a double-lumen intubation had been established, a left posterolateral incision was performed. The chest wall tumor invaded the left upper pulmonary lobe as well as the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs. The tumor had eroded the middle portion of the fifth rib; the heart was impacted by the tumor and mediastinal pleural adhesions were present. We freed-up the outer margin of the tumor and excised the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs. Intercostal tissue was included with a margin over 5 cm. We extracted the tumor and the invaded left upper lobe of lung to remove the pressure on the heart. We then performed the left upper pulmonary lobectomy. Finally, we joined four 10 x 10 cm2 polyester surgical patches (knitted type) into one 20 x 20 cm2 patch and this patch was sutured to the chest wall defect for chest wall reconstruction.
The neoplasm, which was removed by surgical resection, weighed 2.080 kg and was 20 cm x 18 cm x 9 cm in size, as shown in Figure 2A. There were multiple nodules on its surface and a cross section of the tumor was honeycombed in appearance. The pathology report described a giant cell malignant fibrous histiocytoma cell tumor (Figure 2B), with the immunohistochemistry of CD68 (+), Vimentin (+), SMA, CK and S-100 (-) (Figure 2C), invading the left upper lung lobe and the middle of the fourth, fifth, sixth ribs, with no metastases to the mediastinal lymph nodes. Her postoperative course was uneventful. She was discharged 12 days after surgery and showed no signs of local recurrence or distal disease at an 8-month follow-up visit (Figure 3).