Unusual Cancer Diagnosis Leads to Finger and Toe Loss

Rare Bone-Eating Cancer Replaced Man’s Finger and Toe

In a disturbing turn of events, a 55-year-old man in Australia has tragically lost his finger and toe due to a rare and aggressive form of bone-eating cancer.

The patient presented with six weeks of painful swelling in his right middle finger and right big toe, accompanied by an open wound under the toe’s fingernail. The symptoms initially resembled gout or osteomyelitis but were later revealed through X-rays to be caused by metastatic squamous-cell lung cancer that had “completely replaced” the outermost bones of his affected digits.

According to a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors diagnosed the man with acrometastases – an extremely rare condition where cancer spreads beyond the lungs to the bones past the elbows and knees. This phenomenon is estimated to occur in only 0.1% of cases involving bone metastasis.

The unusual presentation prompted doctors to opt for palliative radiotherapy treatment aimed at alleviating the man’s symptoms rather than attempting a cure. Unfortunately, the patient succumbed to refractory hypercalcemia, or life-threateningly elevated calcium levels that refused standard treatment, just three weeks following diagnosis and treatment initiation.

This heartbreaking incident underscores the devastating consequences of this aggressive cancer progression in which the body’s bones become invaded by the tumor, causing irreparable damage and often resulting in amputations.

Source: gizmodo.com