Choroidal metastases from thymic carcinoma during pregnancy: Case Report

BACKGROUND: Rare sites of metastases, atypical symptoms and paraneoplastic syndromes are often neglected or misinterpreted, especially when they represent early symptoms of an underlying malignant disease. Hence, an interdisciplinary approach to these patients is essential to avoid tumor progression and metastatic spread in order to provide curative treatment options to the patients. We here report the case of a young woman presenting with visual loss which led to diagnosis of a thymic carcinoma.

CASE PRESENTATION: A 28-year old white woman presented with subacute loss of vision in the last trimester of her first pregnancy which was first interpreted as an exacerbation of a pre-existing dermatomyositis and treated with steroids. After failure of steroid therapy choroidal metastases from an undifferentiated thymic carcinoma were diagnosed. This also shed a new light on the dermatomyositis the patient had been suffering from for seven years possibly representing a paraneoplastic syndrome from the tumor. Despite aggressive chemotherapy, the patient died from progressive disease eight years after first onset of dermatomyositis and 14 months after initial diagnosis of the thymic carcinoma.

CONCLUSIONS: Choroidal metastases from a thymic carcinoma have never been reported before but should be included into the differential diagnosis of choroidal masses.