A Carcinosarcoma of the Stomach

• Published in: The Japanese Journal of Gastroenterological Surgery Vol. 31; no. 4; pp. 945 - 949
• Main Authors: Inoue, Shinya, Yoshimi, Fuyo, Tonouchi, Hitoshi, Ono, Hisayuki, Amemiya, Ryuta, Koizumi, Sumihiko, Hasegawa, Hiroshi, Itabashi, Masayuki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: The Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery 1998
• Subjects: carcinosarcoma of the stomach
• ISSN: 0386-9768; 1348-9372
• DOI: 10.5833/jjgs.31.945

Carcinosarcoma is not very rare in the uterus, breast and esophagus, but is very rare in the stomach. We present a case of gastric carcinosarcoma in a 74-year-old woman. She complained of dysphagia. We found a tumor growing in the cardia and the lower esophagus. As the tumor was diagnosed as gastric cancer invading to the lower esophagus, total gastrectomy and lower esophagectomy was performed. The pathologic diagnosis was carcinosarcoma of the stomach. As the sarcomatous component was welldifferentiated to chondrosarcoma, we concluded that the tumor is a true carcinosarcoma. Most of the carcinosarcomas previously reported are “so-called carcinosarcoma” in which “sarcomatous component” is spindle cell sarcoma, not showing definite differentiation toward a specificorgan or tissue. There are only four reported cases of true carcinosarcomas in which the sarcomatous component was differentiated to the specific nonepithelial cell. In this case, we considered that the carcinoma cell acquired the ability to produce cartilaginous tissue histologically and immunologically.