A Case of c-kit-positive Gastrointestinal Mesenchymal Tumor Responding to Imatinib Mesylate

Hiroshi Omori, Yoshinori Nio, Kunihiro Yamasawa, Yoshinori Kitamura, Makoto Koike, Masayuki Itakura, Seiji Yano, Koji Hashimoto, Shoichiro Sumi^* and Tetsuya Higami

First Department of Surgery, Shimane Medical University
Institute for Frontier Medical Science, Kyoto University^*

We report a case of c-kit-positive gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor (GIMT) of the rectum evaluated as a partial response (PR) and in which the quality of life (QOL) was improved by imatinib mesylate (Glivec). This drug is usually used to treat chronic myelocytic leukemia. The patient was a 64-year-old woman. Since the primary tumor was removed by rectal low anterior resection, 5 operations were needed to completely remove the tumors of intraperitoneal recurrence. She was again admitted on January 16 2002, for obstruction of the right urinary tract due to recurrent tumors in the pelvis. After we inserted a double-J catheter into the right urinary tract, imatinib mesylate (Glivec) at a dose of 400 mg/day was administered orally for 2 months. The 2 lesions, estimable on computed tomography (CT), reduced to 62% and 70% in size, with no new lesion found. We evaluated it as a PR. Hypogastric pain and low back pain disappeared and both abdominal fullness and constipation improved symptomatically. Treatment by imatinib mesylate is thus useful in gastointestinal mesenchymal tumors in addition to strict GIST, if the c-kit expression is confirmed.

Key words
imatinib mesylate, gastointestinal mesenchymal tumor, c-kit

Reprint requests
Hiroshi Omori First Department of Surgery, Shimane Medical University 89-1 Enya-cho, Izumo, 693-8501 JAPAN

Accepted
July 24, 2002

To read the PDF file you will need Abobe Reader installed on your computer.