Non-small cell lung cancer and elevated eosinophil count: A case report and literature review

Abstract

In earlier work it was unclear whether there was any true prognostic value when high numbers of eosinophils were seen in the peripheral blood of lung cancer patients. As time passed, it became somewhat clearer that this occurrence may correlate with a poor prognosis in these patients. These ideas reflected what we came to know about the pathophysiology of hypereosinophilia in the blood in this setting. With paraneoplastic processes and distant metastases (to the bone marrow) thought to function at least in part as the mechanism of hypereosinophilia in these patients, it became more evident why these patients tended to have a poorer prognosis. However interestingly and paradoxically, there also has been work indicating that this occurrence may actually be protective against metastatic disease.

Here, we present the case of a sixty year old Caucasian female who presented with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), diffusely metastatic at presentation, who also presented with hypereosinophilia which proved to be a poor prognostic indicator in this case.