[GIST: a clinical case as a model of surgical and pharmacological therapy of solid tumours]

Gastrointestinal stromal tumour: report of a case as a model of surgical and pharmacological therapy of solid tumours. mutation of this protein is present in most of these tumours. Gastrointestinal stromal tumours are notoriously unresponsive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy and prior to the recent introduction of the kit inhibitor imatinib, there was no effective therapy for advanced, metastatic disease. We report a case of metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumour located primarily in the ileum and examine it in detail in order to contribute both to identifying factors capable of predicting its clinical course and evaluating the efficacy of imatinib as adjuvant therapy for this rare type of tumour. We share the opinion that, given the present state of the art, surgical resection remains the gold standard of treatment for these tumours and imatinib is a valid systemic therapy for metastastic and locally unresectable gastrointestinal stromal tumours.