Bone marrow metastasis of colon cancer as the first site of recurrence: A case report

Bone marrow metastasis from solid tumors is usually accepted as not only incurable, but as fatal. Colon cancer is a relatively rare malignancy that involves the bone marrow, and to the best of our knowledge, there have been no studies in the literature reporting only bone marrow metastasis of colon cancer as the first presentation of relapse. The present study reports the case of a 74-year-old female patient treated by resection and adjuvant chemotherapy for stage IIIc colon cancer who presented with severe thrombocytopenia with intracranial hemorrhage, and the bone marrow was first and only site of metastasis. There was no evidence of skeletal metastasis. The clinical course was extremely aggressive and the patient succumbed ten days after admission, finally being diagnosed in the postmortem examination. The present study also discusses bone marrow metastasis of solid tumors, with particular respect to the diagnostic difficulties of such rare cases.