A 32-year-old patient was diagnosed with lung cancer after losing vision in one eye. The cancer had migrated to several other organs.
Written on 02/05/2024
Hello Doctors – Newen Digital
Blindness as the first symptom of lung cancer? If this situation seems highly improbable or even impossible, it is nevertheless what happened to a 32-year-old patient.
His cancer had actually spread throughout his body, reports LiveSciencetaking up a case study published in Radiology Case Reports. The woman had consulted for the first time “after losing sight in the right eye and experiencing occasional flashes of light in the left eye for about twenty days.” Doctors then declared that his eyes were healthy.
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Lung cancer metastasis
But after a more in-depth examination, the medical profession found “that a large whitish and yellowish mass was developing at the back of the right eye. Fluid had also accumulated under the retina, the part of the eye sensitive to light, causing it to detach”continues LiveScience.
The patient then took a blood test, revealing no abnormalities. It is finally “a chest x-ray and a full body scan” who shed light on the problem: “a mass of cancerous tissue growing in the lower part of the patient’s right lung. This tumor had spread to many other organs, including a part of the eyes called the choroid.”
An extremely rare case
Most of the time, when cancer spreads to the eyes, the migrating tumors lodge in this choroid, explains further LiveScience. “However, this rarely occurs in lung cancers, which only migrate to the eyes in 0.1% to 7% of cases.”
In total, only 60 similar cases have been described in the medical literature. Especially since the young woman did not smoke, even though smoking is linked to a large proportion of cases of lung cancer.
