A Fatal Case of Hepatic Congestion and Necrosis Caused by Tumor Emboli in the Hepatic Veins Five Months after Curative Resection of Sigmoid Colon Cancer

Five months after radical sigmoid colon cancer (pStage IIIb) surgery in September 2007, an 84-year-old man reporting upper abdominal distension was found in abdominal computed tomography (CT) to have multiple liver metastases and widespread left-lobe hepatic congestion. One week after being hospitalized, he died of hepatic and renal failure. A pathological autopsy indicated that he died of multiple liver metastases from poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma and left-lobe hepatic congestion and necrosis due to a tumor embolus forming in the branch inward toward the middle and left hepatic veins, and the left branch of the portal vein. Tumor embolus formation in the hepatic veins and the portal vein caused by large intestinal carcinoma and subsequent hepatic congestion and necrosis are believed to be pathologically extremely uncommon.