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CASE REPORT article

Front. Oncol.

Sec. Thoracic Oncology

Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1558986

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancements in Understanding and Treating Pulmonary Neuroendocrine TumorsView all 3 articles

Advanced Small Cell Lung Cancer with Severe Hyponatremia: a case report and review of the literature

Provisionally accepted
  • Sheng Jing Hospital Affiliated, China Medical University, Shenyang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a rare pathological type of lung cancer, frequently associated with neuroendocrine symptoms such as hyponatremia. This article presents a case involving a 59-year-old male patient admitted to the hospital with neurological symptoms and severe hyponatremia. He was diagnosed with SCLC accompanied by syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) upon admission. Following oral and intravenous sodium supplementation, along with the administration of tolvaptan, the patient's serum sodium levels increased. However, upon initiating chemotherapy, the patient's hyponatremia worsened, leading to seizures and the need for ventilator support therapy. Despite normalization of serum sodium levels, the patient's symptoms did not improve. Ultimately, due to the severity of the patient's condition, the family elected to discontinue further medical intervention and proceeded with hospital discharge. Thus, in clinical practice, when encountering unexplained refractory hyponatremia with lung lesions, clinicians should consider the possibility of lung cancer with SIADH to ensure timely and precise treatment.

Keywords: Small Cell Lung Cancer, Hyponatremia, Syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion, Neuroendcrine tumor, lung cancer

Received: 11 Jan 2025; Accepted: 20 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Li and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Tongtong Xu, Sheng Jing Hospital Affiliated, China Medical University, Shenyang, China

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