Chest wall implantation of lung cancer following chest tube drainage of a pleural effusion

A 67-year-old man with a lung mass developed a large painful chest wall swelling adjacent to a chest drainage tube site. The swelling occurred after a second chest drain was performed for a rapidly relapsing pleural effusion, and the biopsy showed that it was an adenocarcinoma. We conclude that chest wall tumour implantation was caused by the chest tube drainage of the malignant pleural effusion, and that this accelerated the patient’s deterioration. Our case illustrates the possibility of chest tube seeding of tumour cells from pleura to chest wall.