Abstract
The patient was a 61-year-old woman, who had undergone distal gastrectomy for gastric cancer (tub2, >por2, se, INFγ, ly0, v0, n2, cy1) 13 years earlier, followed by chemotherapy with 5-FU/MTX and UFT. After a 5-year follow-up of her clinical course in our clinic, she had been followed by a nearby hospital. This time when 13 years had elapsed after the initial operation, she was seen at our hospital because of lower abdominal pain. Close exploration disclosed passage disturbance at the small intestine. Primary small bowel cancer was suspected and she was operated on. During surgery, another tumor was found in the right ovary, so that the small bowel tumor and the right ovarian tumor were resected simultaneously. Histopathology revealed both tumors of the small bowel and the right ovary to be late recurrence of the gastric cancer which was resected 13 years before admission. The postoperative course was uneventful and she has been on chemotherapy.
Postoperative recurrence of gastric cancer is observed within five years postoperatively in many cases, and rarely recurs more than 10 years after the initial operation. This paper deals with our experience with a case of recurrence of gastric cancer which developed 13 years after the initial operation.
