Case report
Benign Esophageal Schwannoma Compressing the Trachea in Pregnancy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2007.07.088Get rights and content

A rare case of esophageal schwannoma compressing the trachea in pregnancy is presented. A 29-year-old pregnant woman was hospitalized due to severe dyspnea. Imaging studies revealed a homogeneous tumor (8 cm in diameter) in the posterior mediastinum with compression of the lower trachea. After an uneventful cesarean section, the patient underwent a mini-axillary thoracotomy with video-assisted thoracic surgery. The tumor arose from within the muscular layers of the esophagus and was enucleated by gentle blunt dissection. Pathologic and immunohistochemical examinations revealed a benign esophageal schwannoma.

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Comment

The most common submucosal tumors of the digestive tract are leiomyomas, especially in the esophagus and stomach. Daimaru and colleagues [1] investigated 306 gastrointestinal spindle-cell tumor specimens by immunohistochemistry and identified 24 cases (7.8%) as schwannomas. Esophageal schwannoma is extremely rare, with only 30 reported cases. Reviews of previous reports [2, 3, 4] indicate that benign schwannomas are usually located in the upper esophagus and occur in middle-aged women. The most

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