Our experience of treating undifferentiated gastric carcinoma: report of four cases

Undifferentiated gastric carcinoma is a rare histopathological type of cancer that does not show any differentiation toward adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma. It is thought to be highly malignant, and is associated with a poor prognosis. However, its clinical behavior has not yet been fully analyzed because of its rarity. We herein review the clinical characteristics and prognoses of patients with undifferentiated gastric carcinoma treated at our institutions. Among 2,651 gastric cancer patients, four (0.2 %) were histopathologically diagnosed to have undifferentiated carcinoma. These four patients included three males and one female. The median age of the patients was 60-year old (range 47-75). Three cases had distant metastases at diagnosis. One of these three cases was treated with chemotherapy alone, and the other two were treated with palliative gastrectomy and chemotherapy. The patient with no distant metastasis underwent curative gastrectomy and adjuvant chemotherapy. All patients died of cancer at a median of 5.4 (range 3.5-7.1) months after their diagnoses.