Metastatic disease first presenting as eyelid tumors: a report of two cases and review of the literature.

We present two unusual cases in which an eyelid tumor was the first sign of metastatic disease. The first involved a 53-year-old man with pulmonary carcinoma and the second a 71-year-old man with malignant lymphoma. Fifteen similar cases from the literature are reviewed. The most frequent primary lesion is breast carcinoma in women, which appears as a diffuse lesion of one or two eyelids. Metastatic lung carcinoma in men appears as solitary nodules, representing the second-most common type of lesion. The questions of left- or right-side predominance, age and sex of patients, types of tumors, and prognosis are discussed.