Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. May 8, 2015; 4(2): 30-34
Published online May 8, 2015. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v4.i2.30
Endobronchial tumor in children: Unusual finding in recurrent pneumonia, report of three cases
Silvia Madafferi, Vincenzo D Catania, Antonella Accinni, Renata Boldrini, Alessandro Inserra
Silvia Madafferi, Vincenzo D Catania, Antonella Accinni, Alessandro Inserra, Department of General and Thoracic Surgery, Bambino Gesù Children Hospital-Resarch Institute, 00152 Rome, Italy
Renata Boldrini, Department of Pathology, Bambino Gesù Children Hospital-Resarch Institute, 00152 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Madafferi S, Accinni A and Inserra A designed the report; Boldrini R performed the histopatological analyses; Madafferi S and Catania VD collected the patient’s clinical data; Madafferi S, Catania VD and Accinni A analyzed the data and wrote the paper; all authors revisited and approved the final manuscript.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent: All study partecipants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: No conflicts of interest were declared by the authors.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Vincenzo D Catania, MD, Department of General and Thoracic Surgery, Bambino Gesù Children Hospital-Resarch Institute, p.zza Sant’Onofrio, 4, 00152 Rome, Italy. vdcatania1985@gmail.com
Telephone: +39-6-68592555 Fax: +39-6-68592876
Received: November 25, 2014
Peer-review started: November 26, 2014
First decision: January 8, 2015
Revised: January 27, 2015
Accepted: March 30, 2015
Article in press: April 2, 2015
Published online: May 8, 2015
Abstract

We are reporting 3 cases of pediatric endobronchial tumors presented with recurrent pneumonia. The median age of patients, at time of presentation, was 10.6 years. All patients presented with recurrent pneumonia with a mean time to occurrence, after onset of symptoms, of 14 mo. Bronchoscopy was early performed as part of diagnostic work-up and it revealed an endobronchial mass in every case. Complete surgical resection was performed in all cases, with lung preservation in two of them. Neither post-operative chemotherapy nor radiotherapy was required. The mean duration of follow-up was 7 years and all patients are still alive and disease-free. Recurrent pneumonia, in pediatrics, should raise the suspicion of an obstructing lesion, congenital malformation or systemic disease. A systematic approach is useful for organize the clinicians initial workup. Prompt diagnosis allows parenchymal-sparing surgery, which offers the best chance of cure and reduces clinical and functional complications in these patients.

Keywords: Recurrent pneumonia, Pediatric, Endo-bronchial tumor, Mucoepidermoid tumor, Carcinoid tumor

Core tip: The role of a systematic diagnostic work up in determining the risk of rare conditions in pediatric recurrent pneumonia has been delineated. This case series not only present 3 cases of rare pediatric endobronchial tumors, but also applies early bronchoscopy as a tool to rule out the presence of tumors of the respiratory tree in case of recurrent pneumonia. Prompt diagnosis allows parenchymal-preserving surgery, which offer the best chance of cure and reduce clinical and functional complications in these patients.