A Case of Protruded Type Gastric Signet Ring Cell Carcinoma

Yasukatsu Takushi, Hironori Samura, Takashi Oshiro, Hirofumi Tomori, Hideaki Shimoji and Tadashi Nishimaki

Division of Digestive and General Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of the Ryukyu

Early gastric cancer consisting of signet-ring cell carcinoma usually presents as a depressed lesion and rarely as protruding. An asymptomatic 61-year-old man was found in mass-screening UGI radiography for mass screening to have a polypoid lesion at the cardia diagnosed by biopsy as signet-ring cell carcinoma (sig.), necessitating proximal gastrectomy. Pathologically, the lesion was diagnosed as undifferentiated (sig.) and well or moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma (tub.) in early Type I gastric cancer invading the submucosa. The histological classification of elevated early gastric cancer is generally moderately or poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma. In many cases, undifferentiated histologies such as poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma or sig. exist almost exclusively in a restricted area of depressed lesions and not as part of elevated components. Only 21 cases of this type of gastric cancer, including ours, have been reported in the Japanese literature. Pathological findings indicated well-differentiated adenocarcinoma at the bottom of the elevated lesion that had dedifferentiated into sig. while producing extracellular mucus.

Key words
signet-ring cell carcinoma, protruding gastric cancer

Reprint requests
Yasukatsu Takushi First Department of Surgery, University of the Ryukyus, School of Medicine
207 Uehara, Nishihara-cho, Nakagami-gun, 903-0125 JAPAN

Accepted
June 27, 2007

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