Gastrointestinal estromal tumor. Presentation of a case

Abstract

Since the first descriptions made by Golden and Stout, this group of mesenchymal lesions is considered of muscular origin and they were named as leiomyoma, cellular leiomyoma, epithelioid leiomyoma, leiomyoblastoma, bizarre leiomyoma and leiomyosarcoma. But Mazur and Clark created the term estromal tumor only after they began to use the inmunohistochemistry and subsequently showed the absence of muscular markers, and the occasional presence of neural markers. Nowadays, gastrointestinal estromal tumors are called the primary mesenchymal CD117.positive, fusiform or epithelioid tumors of the gastrointestinal tract, epiplon, mesenterio, and retroperitoneum. The gastrointestinal estromal tumors appear at the wall of the digestive tube: stomach (50-60 %), small intestine (20-30 %), large intestine (10 %) and esophagus (5 %), and occasionally in epiplon, mesenterio, and retroperineum (5 %). In our work we present a 67 year-old patient, entered in our hospital for presenting high digestive bleeding. We studied the case, and found a 6 cm tumor of the gastric fundus. The tumor was operated and the definitive results of the pathologic anatomy showed a gastrointestinal estromal tumor.