İlk başvuruda primer odağı bilinmeyen metastatik karaciğer tümörlü 43 olgunun irdelenmesi

Background/aim: Although patients with liver metastases and unknown primary focus have poor prognosis, some have a relatively good prognosis, such as cases of liver metastases of neuroendocrine tumors. Thus, the histopathological property of these metastatic tumors is valuable in treatment and follow-up of these patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the histopathological and cytological properties of our patients with liver metastases retrospectively. Materials and methods: The medical reports of 43 patients who were hospitalized at the Gastroenterology Department between January 2000-May 2003 and diagnosed to have biopsy- proven liver metastases were reviewed retrospectively. Patients who were diagnosed to have primary hepatic tumor, cholangiocarcinoma, or lymphoma and those with insufficient medical records were excluded. Age, sex, histopathological and cytological diagnoses and, if found, primary focus of malignancy of the patients were evaluated. Results: The mean age of the 43 patients (23 males, 20 females) was 59 years (range: 19-88). Histopathological spectrum included adenocarcinoma in 26, neuroendocrine tumor in 8, anaplastic carcinoma in 4, and other in 5. Malignant cytology in 37 (86%), benign cytology in 5 (11%) and suspected cytology in 1 (3%) were reported. Sensitivity of the cytology was found to be 86%. Primary focus of malignancy was found in 17 (40%) patients and 26 (60%) patients were diagnosed to have a malignancy of unknown primary focus with liver metastases. Conclusion: Both the percentage of neuroendocrine tumors presenting with liver metastases and the percentage of patients whose primary focus of malignancy unknown were found to be higher than the percentage reported in literature. We suggest that liver biopsy should be performed in metastatic liver tumors.