Diabetes Insipidus: An Unusual Presentation of Adenocarcinoma of the Lung in a Patient with no Identifiable Lung Mass.

CONTEXT

Lung cancers are known to metastasize to unusual sites. Despite this knowledge often times the diagnosis of a primary lung cancer gets delayed especially when the patient presents without respiratory symptoms.

CASE REPORT

The patient discussed in our review is a 47-year-old female, smoker who had presented to several hospitals with months of headache, nausea and intermittent episodes of vomiting. She was noted to have hypernatremia due to diabetes insipidus and a pituitary lesion on her magnetic resonance images. The pituitary mass on biopsy was found to represent a metastatic focus from a primary lung adenocarcinoma.

CONCLUSION

Clinicians should be aware of malignancies that are well known to metastasize to the posterior pituitary. Conversely, since not every patient presents with symptoms of metastasis, there is a need to recognize the clinical syndromes (e. g., diabetes insipidus-like symptoms or more subtle symptoms like cranial nerve palsies) associated with potential metastasis to the pituitary.