Esophageal carcinoma with asbestos bodies

Our plain-English summary of Esophageal carcinoma with asbestos bodies, by J.P. Parmar (American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1992).

The study

• Author: J.P. Parmar
• Journal: American Journal of Industrial Medicine
• Published: 1992;21(4):605-8
• Type of article: Case report, Letter
• Cited by: 6 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

In this letter to the editor, a pathologist at Wheeling Hospital, West Virginia, described two men with esophageal carcinoma for whom occupational histories and abundant autopsy tissue, including sections of the esophagus and the tumor, were available. He examined routine hematoxylin and eosin-stained slides under light microscopy for asbestos bodies and fibers. The first patient, a 72-year-old man, had worked as an insulation worker for 32 years and had smoked one pack of cigarettes a day for 40 years. Autopsy showed an adenocarcinoma in the distal third of the esophagus that had spread through the muscle wall into regional lymph nodes. Four unequivocal asbestos bodies were found in the esophageal stroma, and the lungs showed severe asbestosis. The second patient, a 57-year-old man, had worked for 30 years as a pitman and teemer at a Pittsburgh steel plant, where he was stated to have used asbestos-containing materials. He was a 30 pack-year smoker with a long history of alcohol abuse. He had a poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma of the mid-esophagus and died within 18 months of diagnosis. One asbestos body and two long asbestos fibers were found in the stroma of the tumor, and the lungs showed mild to moderate asbestosis. The author stated that he believed asbestos bodies had not previously been demonstrated near esophageal cancers in asbestos workers. He recommended that pathologists look for them in gastroesophageal tumors and concluded that the findings confirm the epidemiological evidence linking asbestos to these tumors.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This letter to the editor, by a hospital pathologist, described two men with esophageal cancer who had worked with asbestos and whose autopsy tissue was available. The first was a 72-year-old insulation worker exposed for 32 years who had smoked a pack a day for 40 years. He had an adenocarcinoma in the lower third of the esophagus that had spread to nearby lymph nodes. The author found four unequivocal asbestos bodies in the esophageal tissue just outside the muscle wall, and his lungs showed severe asbestosis. The second was a 57-year-old who had worked 30 years as a pitman and teemer at a Pittsburgh steel plant using asbestos-containing materials. He was a smoker with a long history of alcohol abuse. He had a poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma in the middle esophagus. One asbestos body and two long asbestos fibers were seen within the tumor, and his lungs showed mild to moderate asbestosis. The letter did not name the fiber type. The author noted that alcohol and smoking are also linked to this cancer, considered both asbestos exposures heavy, and stated that the findings confirm epidemiological evidence linking asbestos to these tumors.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Letter to the editor describing two autopsy case reports
• Who was studied: Two male workers with esophageal carcinoma and available autopsy tissue: a 72-year-old insulation worker and a 57-year-old pitman and teemer at a Pittsburgh steel plant
• Exposure: Case 1: 32 years of asbestos exposure as an insulation worker. Case 2: 30 years at a steel plant using asbestos-containing material, pipe covering, cement, gaskets and packing, and protective clothing. Fiber type was not stated. Both men smoked (case 1: one pack a day for 40 years; case 2: described as a 30 pack-year smoker), and case 2 had a long history of ethanol abuse.
• Main results:
  • Case 1 (72-year-old insulation worker): adenocarcinoma in the distal third of the esophagus, spread through the muscle wall and into regional lymph nodes. Four unequivocal asbestos bodies were found in the esophageal stroma just outside the smooth muscle wall.
  • Case 1: the lungs showed severe asbestosis with large numbers of asbestos bodies and fibers.
  • Case 2 (57-year-old steel plant worker): poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma of the mid-esophagus, with one asbestos body and two long asbestos fibers in the fibrous stroma within the primary tumor.
  • Case 2: the lungs showed mild to moderate asbestosis with interstitial fibrosis and a moderate number of asbestos bodies.
  • In both cases the asbestos bodies and fibers were seen by light microscopy on routine hematoxylin and eosin-stained slides of esophagus.
• The authors' conclusion: The author considered both cases heavy asbestos exposures. The author recommended that, in similar circumstances, pathologists try to identify asbestos bodies in gastroesophageal tumors as well as in the lung, and stated that the findings confirm the epidemiological evidence linking asbestos to these tumors.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Throat and laryngeal cancer.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Carcinoma, Asbestos Bodies, Autopsy, Insulator, Adenocarcinoma, Asbestos-Containing Material (ACM), Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Asbestos Body Formation.

Related studies

• Occupational exposures and risk of esophageal and gastric cardia cancers among male Swedish construction workers — C. Jansson, A.L. Johansson, et al. (2005)
• Occupational asbestos exposure and risk of esophageal, gastric and colorectal cancer in the prospective Netherlands Cohort Study — N.S. Offermans, R. Vermeulen, et al. (2014)
• Occupational Exposures and Esophageal Cancer: Prog Study — A. Gressier, G. Gourier, et al. (2022)
• 'Pseudomesotheliomatous' carcinomas of the pleura: a 10-year analysis of cases from the Environmental Lung Disease Research Group, Cardiff — R.L. Attanoos, A.R. Gibbs (2003)
• An attempt to use the WHO typing in the histological classification of lung carcinomas — A. Reinilä, K. Dammert (1974)
• Meta-Analysis of the Association between Asbestos Exposure and Esophageal Cancer — C.W. Wu, H.Y. Chuang, et al. (2021)

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