Clinicopathological study of gastric metastases

The stomach is an uncommon site for metastasis, and most of the reported examples would appear to have been caused by direct invasion from primary malignancies. Metastases to the stomach are extremely rare, and few cases have been reported in the literature. This study was intended to evaluate the character of and the prognosis for metastasized tumors of the stomach.

We evaluated the medical records of patients who had presented at the National Taiwan University Hospital over a period of 10 years prior to writing who had malignancies and had developed metastasis to the stomach. We evaluated the histology, initial presentations, imaging findings, lesion locations, treatment courses, and overall patient survival.

From October 1995 to October 2004 inclusively, only 18 patients featuring known malignancies with metastases to the stomach were found. The male to female ratio was 10:8. The initial symptom for 13 study patients was bleeding from the metastasis tumors, and the remaining 5 experienced a variety of other symptoms. The site of the metastasis was the gastric body for 9 patients, the gastric antrum for 6, the cardia or fundus for 2, and the entire stomach for 1. The time period elapsing between the emergence of the primary malignancy and the gastric metastasis was less than 2 years for 3 patients and about 5-6 years for another 2 patients. The mean time elapsing from the diagnosis of gastric metastasis to patient death was quite short, namely, about 6 months.

Carcinomas featuring gastric metastasis are typically very rare and reveal a rather poor prognosis. The results of this preliminary study suggest that most treatment for these patients seemed to provide only symptomatic relief but did not prove helpful for long-term survival.