Hepatocellular carcinoma with splenic metastasis developing after 16 years of chemotherapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia: a case report.

A case of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which developed during chemotherapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), is presented. A 55-year-old Japanese man, who had received an alkylating agent for 16 years, was diagnosed as having HCC with clinically evident splenic metastases. The patient died of the HCC rupture three months after diagnosis. The autopsy revealed the HCC to have developed from the non-cirrhotic liver. In the present case, DNA damage due to the long-term chemotherapy with the alkylating agent for CML may have endowed the HCC induced by post-transfusion hepatitis and alcohol abuse with an aggressive proliferative potential. This is the first report on HCC in association with CML.