Hypertrophic Osteoarthropathy in Association with Pulmonary Metastases from Extrathoracic Malignancies

¹ Attending Thoracic Surgeon, Menteflore Hospital; Consultant Surgeon, The Mount Sinai Hospital.

A case report of a patient who developed clubbing and symptoms of hypertrophic osteoarthropathy with each of two metachronous, metastatic, pulmonary rhabdomyosarcomas is presented. The metastases were resected; there was an interval of 18 months between the operations, and the symptoms regressed after each procedure. Only 28 cases of hypertrophic osteoarthropathy associated with pulmonary metastases from extrathoracic malignancies have been reported in the literature. Seventeen of these neoplasms were sarcomas. In a series of 883 patients with pulmonary metastases from extrathoracic malignancies, 34 (3.8 per cent) had clubbing and none had clinical symptoms of hypertrophic osteoarthropathy.