Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jul 6, 2022; 10(19): 6722-6727
Published online Jul 6, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i19.6722
Two smoking-related lesions in the same pulmonary lobe of squamous cell carcinoma and pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis: A case report
Aysegul Gencer, Gizem Ozcibik, Fatma Gulsum Karakas, Ismail Sarbay, Sebnem Batur, Sermin Borekci, Akif Turna
Aysegul Gencer, Fatma Gulsum Karakas, Sermin Borekci, Department of Pulmonary Diseases, Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty Campus, Istanbul 34098, Turkey
Gizem Ozcibik, Ismail Sarbay, Akif Turna, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty, Istanbul 34098, Turkey
Sebnem Batur, Department of Pathology, Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty, Istanbul 34098, Turkey
Author contributions: Gencer A and Karakas FG collected the patient data and performed his follow-up; Ozcibik G, Sarbay I and Turna A performed the operation; Batur S performed immunohistochemical analyses; Gencer A, Borekci S and Turna A wrote the paper; all authors have read and approved the manuscript.
Informed consent statement: Informed written consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this report and any accompanying images.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Aysegul Gencer, MD, Academic Research, Department of Pulmonary Diseases, Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty Campus, Kocamustafapasa Street, No. 53, Cerrahpasa 34098 Fatih, Istanbul 34098, Turkey. aysegulbozkurtgencer@gmail.com
Received: February 28, 2022
Peer-review started: February 28, 2022
First decision: April 8, 2022
Revised: April 14, 2022
Accepted: April 24, 2022
Article in press: April 24, 2022
Published online: July 6, 2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis (PLCH) is a rare cystic lung disease usually affecting young adults. It is predicted that PLCH is a lung tumor precursor associated with dysfunction of the myeloid dendritic cells in the lung.

CASE SUMMARY

A 70-year-old male patient presented with chronic cough and sputum. He had symptoms for 5 years and described shortness of breath on exertion for the previous 3 years. He had a 60 packs/year smoking history. Computerized tomography of the thorax revealed an 11-mm nodule in the right lung lower lobe superior segment and a 7-mm nodule in the right lung lower lobe poster basal segment. Those two nodules were resected by means of right thoracoscopic surgery. Pathological evaluation revealed a squamous cell carcinoma and PLCH.

CONCLUSION

Coexistent squamous cell carcinoma and PLCH suggest possible association between PLCH and lung cancer.

Keywords: Pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis, Lung cancer, Squamous cell carcinoma, BRAF, Mitogen-activated protein kinase, Case report

Core Tip: The BRAF mutation is associated with a number of tumors, it is thought that Pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis (PLCH) may be a precursor of malignancy. In this case, the diagnosis of PLCH concurrently with the diagnosis of lung squamous cell carcinoma and the detection of BRAF mutation supported this hypothesis.