Background: Skin metastasis from primary squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck is rare . These metastatic lesions are usually detected by physical examination, ultrasound imaging, computed tomography, and positron emission tomography.. Recently, indocyanine green fluorescence angiography (ICG-FA) has been used to discover superficial tumors. However, the optimum timing of ICG injection and fluorescence patterns of skin tumors in ICG-FA are still unknown.
Case presentation: We encountered a 60-year-old man with hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. The patient underwent concurrent chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery. However, following these treatments, the patient developed two nodules in the skin of the right upper limb. Thus, the patient underwent ICG-FA. The two skin metastatic nodules showed different fluorescence patterns. One lesion showed high fluorescence intensity during ICG-FA. However, the fluorescence intensity of a small part of the other lesion exceeded that of the surrounding tissue only for a short time.
Conclusion: We suggest that ICG-FA is effective for detecting skin metastases, and with further studies on the various fluorescence patterns of skin tumors, this technique will become more efficient.
Keywords: Hypopharyngeal carcinoma; Indocyanine green; Skin metastasis; fluorescence angiography; fluorescence detection.
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