Abstract
There have been no reports of gastric gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) <20 mm with distant metastasis. We report a case of a 15-mm gastric GIST with liver metastasis 1 year after surgical resection of the primary lesion. A 35-year-old man underwent routine esophagogastroduodenoscopy in July 2009. A submucosal tumor (SMT) <20 mm was incidentally detected at the posterior wall of the gastric body. Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) indicated that it was a gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor, including GIST, leiomyoma or schwannoma. He did not accept regular follow-up for this gastric SMT, therefore local laparoscopic excision was carried out in October 2009. The final pathological diagnosis after surgery was GIST, 15 mm in size, and a mitotic rate of 7/50 high-power fields, which did not indicate a high metastatic risk. The patient was followed up regularly without adjuvant chemotherapy. At 1 year after surgery, a space-occupying lesion ~15 mm was detected in the left lobe of the liver by abdominal ultrasound, where no mass lesion had been observed before surgery. To make a definite diagnosis of the hepatic mass lesion, EUS-guided fine-needle aspiration was performed, which demonstrated a metastatic liver tumor from a gastric GIST. Although this was a rare case, we should keep in mind that gastric GISTs do have a chance of malignant behavior, even if <20 mm.
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Aso, A., Ihara, E., Kubo, H. et al. Gastric gastrointestinal stromal tumor smaller than 20 mm with liver metastasis. Clin J Gastroenterol 6, 29–32 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-012-0351-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12328-012-0351-0