Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma arising in longstanding lung cysts.

Two adults, both non-smokers, with large peripheral lung cysts, which were of long standing (12 and nine years), were found to have well differentiated mucus secreting adenocarcinomas with a bronchioloalveolar growth pattern associated with the cysts. Lobectomy is likely to have been curative in one of the cases and earlier surgery might have been so in the other. The fact that many of the reported carcinomas associated with lung cysts have developed at an early age, as well as some histological features, suggests that the association is not coincidental; and early surgery for lung cysts is therefore recommended.