Carcinosarcoma of the pancreas with longer survival : a case report and literature review

Abstract EN

Background: Carcinosarcoma is a rare type of malignant tumor that can occur at various organs, such as the digestive tract, lung, and mammary glands.

Carcinosarcoma of the pancreas is an extremely rare and complicated malignant neoplasm, with the char- acteristics of high invasiveness and rapid progression, early metastasis, and poor prognosis.

Case Presentation: We reported a 75-year-old male patient who was admitted with the chief complaint of intermittent pain in the right upper abdomen for more than one month.

Computed tomography scans revealed a space-occupying lesion located in the tail of the pancreas considering pancreatic carcinoma.

The patient underwent surgical resection of the tumor.

Macroscopic observations showed a mass of approximately 6 cm × 5 cm with grayish-white cut surface.

Histological analysis showed a large amount of abnormal differentiated epithelial cells and spindle cells.

The immunohistochemistry results demonstrated biphasic neoplasm with both malignant epithelial and mesenchymal components.

Then, the patient was diagnosed with carcinosarcoma of the pancreas.

Although pancreatic carcinosarcoma was considered to have a poor outcome as previously reported, the patient was free of recurrence for 15 months after the surgery, a longer tumor-free survival recorded for this type of cancer, maybe because the patient received gemcitabine adjuvant chemotherapy after the surgery.

The current literature shows that the longest postoperative survival time is 26 months.

Conclusions: Carcinosarcoma of the pancreas is a rare tumor.

Surgery is the main way of treatment, and chemotherapy can delay tumor development to some extent.