CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Thoracic Oncology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1613711
This article is part of the Research TopicRecent Advances in Radiation Oncology for the Management of Thoracic MalignanciesView all 6 articles
Metastatic Lung Cancer in Meckel's Cave: A Radiotherapy-Successful Case with Literature Review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Radiotherapy, First College of Clinical Medicine, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hangzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
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Background: Meckel's cave (MC) is an atypical site for metastasis, particularly from lung cancer.We report a clinical case of a 70-year-old man with left trigeminal pain, left ptosis and restricted abduction of the left eyeball. The patient had a 2-year history of stage IV lung squamous cell carcinoma. Contrast-enhanced brain MRI and FDG-PET/CT showed an ill-defined mass with heterogeneously enhancing lesion involving the left MC and middle cranial fossa. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS, 30Gy/5fx) achieved significant improvement in symptoms and regression of radiologic tumors within 1 month. Our review of the relevant literature identified only two similar cases with metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma to MC. In addition, we reviewed the scarce literature documenting cases of malignant tumors metastatic to the MC treated with radiotherapy.This is the first reported case of MC metastasis from lung squamous cell carcinoma successfully treated with SRS. MC metastasis management requires histology-specific radiotherapy strategies, with squamous cell carcinoma benefiting from hypofractionated SRS.
Keywords: Meckel's cave metastasis, Trigeminal cave metastasis, lung cancer, Stereotactic radiosurgery, case repoort
Received: 17 Apr 2025; Accepted: 29 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Chen, Lin, Yujie and Guo. 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: Qin Zhi Lu, Department of Radiotherapy, First College of Clinical Medicine, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, 310053, Zhejiang Province, China
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