Arterial embolism of tumor causing fatal organ infarction

Arterial embolism of tumor, excluding patients with cardiac myxomata, is an uncommonly described clinical event, particularly when the tumor fragment is large enough to cause organ infarction. This report concerns a 72 yr old white woman with widespread metastases from colonic adenocarcinoma who, as a terminal event, developed cerebral and myocardial infarction secondary to arterial embolization of tumor. The site of origin of such emboli in the patient, as in those noted in a review of the literature, was a pulmonary metastasis invading a pulmonary vein.