A case of recurrent desmoplastic malignant melanoma presenting as empyema with underlying lung mass

Mangaladevi S Patil; Kristopher M Day; Bassam I Aswad; Jesse Hart; Thomas Ng

doi:10.1093/jscr/rjw029

A case of recurrent desmoplastic malignant melanoma presenting as empyema with underlying lung mass

J Surg Case Rep. 2016 Apr 22;2016(4):rjw029. doi: 10.1093/jscr/rjw029.

Authors

Mangaladevi S Patil¹, Kristopher M Day², Bassam I Aswad³, Jesse Hart³, Thomas Ng²

Affiliations

¹ The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA mangaladevi_patil@brown.edu.
² The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA Department of Surgery, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA.
³ The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA Department of Pathology, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA.

Abstract

Desmoplastic malignant melanoma (DMM) is an extremely rare subtype of cutaneous melanoma that has diverse clinical presentations. We describe the unique case of a 57-year-old man presenting with empyema secondary to vascular occlusion from metastatic DMM. Only two other cases of DMM presenting as a lung mass have been previously reported in the literature. This report highlights potential insidious pathology of DMM, which requires a high clinical suspicion to properly diagnose and manage.

Publication types

Case Reports