Successful treatment of a metastatic hormone-producing adrenal cancer by a combination of mitotane, tegafur and surgical resection.

A 34-year-old man had a huge hormone-producing adrenal cancer with multiple lung metastases, direct liver invasion and a tumor thrombus in the inferior vena cava. Initial treatment was mitotane alone. The dose of mitotane was 2 g/day initially and gradually increased to 15 g/day in combination with 600 mg of tegafur per day. During the initial phase of chemotherapy, the serum mitotane level was relatively low (2.9-4.6 micrograms/ml) and the pulmonary metastases tended to grow in size in spite of a gradual decline in urinary 17-KS and 17-OHCS and a regression of the primary tumor. A seemingly marked increase in serum mitotane (20.5-34.5 micrograms/ml) was coincident with the addition of tegafur. Rapid and consistent regression of the primary tumor occurred. This excellent response to the chemotherapy made the primary tumor with liver invasion and the metastases resectable. The adverse effect of mitotane, central nervous toxicity, appeared to be serum mitotane level dependent. The present results, together with previous reports in the literature, seem to recommend the following therapeutic approaches to advanced adrenal cancer: monitoring of the serum level may be useful in predicting the efficacy as well as the occurrence of side effects of mitotane, surgical treatment of the lesions should be performed whenever possible, even though it may be only palliative, and the combination of mitotane and tegafur is a choice of chemotherapy which should be evaluated in future studies.