A Case of Gastric Large Cell Endocrine Carcinoma

Abstract

A 74-year-old man was detected as having an abdominal tumor of approximately 5 cm in diameter on abdominal ultrasonography at the primary care doctor; he visited our hospital. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed type 2 lesion at the rear wall of the upper body of the stomach. This lesion was approximately 3 cm away from the cardia. Gastric neuroendocrine carcinoma was diagnosed using biopsy and immunostaining examination. Abdominal computed tomography revealed thickening of the stomach wall from the cardia to the rear wall of the body. Based on these results, the patient was diagnosed with gastric neuroendocrine carcinoma. Gastric neuroendocrine is classified into large cell and small cell types based on the Japanese Classification of Gastric Carcinoma, 14^th edition of 2010. Current data indicates that 76％ cases of gastric carcinoma have advanced cancer when detected; the 5-year survival rate is 24％ and the mean survival time is 7-9 months. In another report where 10 cases of gastric large cell endocrine carcinoma was studied, 3 cases had lymph node metastasis and one case had liver metastasis. The mean survival time of these patient was over 24 months. Based on this analysis, the prognosis of large cell type is considered to be good.