Abstract
In May 2009 an 83-year-old woman with fatigue, anorexia, and anemia was diagnosed as having type 1 gastric cancer based on gastrointestinal fiberscopy, X-ray examination of the upper gastrointestinal tract, and abdominal CT-scan ; the gastric cancer was located in the anterior wall of the antrum. The patient underwent a curative distal gastrectomy with a D2 lymph node dissection. Surgical findings were T2, N1, P0, H0, M0, stage II. The final pathological diagnosis was an early small cell carcinoma of the stomach with lymph node metastases (sm, n1 (+)). The tumor was immunohistochemically positive for synaptophysin and CD56. Among 67 gastric cancer cases reported in the Japanese literature, only 6 patients had early gastric cancer. Five of the 6 patients with early gastric cancer had lymph node metastases. Primary early gastric small cell carcinoma is rare and has a poor prognosis due to the presence of lymph node and liver metastases in the early stage.
