Successful long-term disease-free survival following multimodal treatments in a patient with a repeatedly recurrent refractory adrenal cortical carcinoma

A 47-year-old male patient underwent surgery for a 10-cm adrenal cortical carcinoma. A large invasive adrenal mass was surgically removed en bloc with the right kidney and the lower lobe of the liver. Two months postoperatively, a 7-cm recurrent mass developed in the right psoas muscle. After a partial response was achieved by irradiation (40 Gy) and high-dose chemotherapy (carboplatin and etoposide) with peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, the patient underwent surgery with a wide excision of the psoas muscle. Twelve months after the initial surgery, an 8-cm rib metastasis developed and the patient again underwent surgery after a combination of irradiation (50 Gy) and chemotherapy (cisplatin and etoposide). The patient has been doing well without any evidence of recurrence for 5 years. Refractory or metastatic adrenal cortical carcinomas have been thought to be lethal, therefore, the present case provides support for multimodal treatments of refractory adrenocortical cancers.