Base of the tongue metastatic cancer from hepatocellular carcinoma: A case report

Although hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignancy in Taiwan, metastasis to the head and neck area is extremely rare. In this report, we document a case of HCC metastasis to the base of the tongue. The patient involved had been treated for HCC with chemoembolization and radiotherapy 3 years prior to being diagnosed with tongue base metastasis. Symptoms of the metastasis included frequent oozing from the tongue base tumor. The patient died 3 months after a palliative resection of the tongue. To our knowledge, this is the first clinical presentation of HCC metastasis to the tongue base documented in the English language. We also believe that this particular case is important because we predict that the advancement in HCC treatment modalities will allow enough survival time in patients to cause occult extrahepatic metastatic lesion to develop into a field of clinical significance.