What happened, in summary

A 53-year-old woman with COPD was hospitalized with coughing, coughing up blood, fatigue, weight loss, shortness of breath, and back pain. She had recently been treated for pneumonia, and an earlier bronchoscopy had not identified a tumor.

A later CT scan showed a very large right-lung mass surrounding the main bronchus and compressing major chest vessels. A second bronchoscopy and lymph-node aspiration provided tissue for diagnosis, confirming large-cell lung carcinoma. The cancer was classified as Stage III.

An oncology team recommended chemoradiotherapy. She died 17 days after the lung-cancer diagnosis while being treated for recurrent pneumonia complicated by COPD that did not respond to targeted antibiotics. Her case shows how pneumonia and chronic respiratory disease can obscure a rapidly progressing lung cancer.