Gastrointestinal autonomic nerve tumor of the stomach

Female, 32 FINAL DIAGNOSIS: Gastrintestinal Autonomic Nerve Tumor (GANT) Symptoms: anemia • anorexia • fatigue • fever • hearburn • nausea • weight loss

- Clinical Procedure: - Specialty: Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Rare disease.

Gastrointestinal autonomic nerve tumors (GANT) are extremely rare tumors that are related to gastrointestinal autonomic nervous plexuses. They are distinguished from stromal tumors by their unique ultrastructural features. Hence, their diagnosis is usually made on electron microscopy and immunohistochemical analyses. Although they are apparently slow-growing tumors, they run an aggressive clinical course and often associated with poor prognosis which eventually leads to death.

We report on a case of gastric GANT in a young female who was treated surgically by total gastrectomy. The disease, however ran an aggressive course with the development of distant (nodal, liver, lung, adrenal and musculo-skeletal) metastases two months after the radical resection.

We believe this could be the first reported case of adrenal and musculo-skeletal metastases from gastric GANT soon after the radical gastric resection.