Clinical characteristics of pulmonary hamartoma resected surgically as undiagnosed pulmonary nodule

Abstract

Pulmonary hamartoma is the most common tumor in benign lung neoplasm. We reviewed the clinical characteristics of 9 patients who had undergone surgical resection for pulmonary hamartoma between 2000 and 2009. There were 1 male and 8 female patients. The age of the patients ranged from 42 to 77 years old (mean 59). Calcification was not observed by computed tomography scan except in 1 patient. Although transbronchial lung biopsy (TBLB) was performed in 5 patients, no definitive diagnosis was obtained. Six patients underwent 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography, and none of them showed any accumulation of FDG except for 1 patient. Concerning the operative procedures, a sleeve lobectomy was performed in 1 patient, a segmentectomy in 1, a lobectomy in 2, a partial resection of the lung in 3, and a nucleation in 2 patients. The postoperative courses were uneventful, and no findings of recurrence were observed in any of the patients after surgery. As a preoperative diagnosis of pulmonary hamartoma is often difficult in TBLB, it is necessary to perform surgical resection in the differential diagnosis of lung cancer or metastatic lung tumor, unless there are typical findings of pulmonary hamartoma in clinical imaging.