Radiation induced skin cancer the chest wall 30 years later from breast cancer operation

This paper describes the skin cancer on the frontal chest wall induced by postoperative irradiation 30 years later from mastectomy. The patients was a 62-year-old woman, who received mastectomy of the right breast cancer (invasive ductal carcinoma, comedo type) at 31 years old, and received the postoperative radiotherapy of total 11,628 rad over 38 times. On the first medical examination in author's hospital, the patient had an ulcer of about 10 cm diameter and was diagnosed the radiation induced skin cancer (well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma) in the biopsy. Because of the general condition of the patient was extremely bad and the skin cancer had highly developed, the excision was thought to be impossible. The radiotherapy (16 Gy) and combined local chemotherapy by OK 432 and Bleomycin were performed. In spite of the short term treatment, these therapies were effective on the reduction of the tumor size and the hemostasis, and brought the patient the improvement of QOL. The general condition of the patient improved to be stable and she recovered enough to go out from the hospital for 6 months. After 10 months, she showed anorexia and dyspnea and died after about 1 year from the admission. The present case is extremely rare, and it is required the radical therapy like the excision of chest wall at early stage. (K.H.)