The Benefit Of Chemotherapy In A Patient With Gastric Medullary Cancer

Undifferentiated gastric carcinomas with few glandular structures and scanty stroma are called “medullary type gastric carcinoma (MGC) ”. MGC is very rare in Turkey and in Western countries. So there is limited data about the choice of chemotherapy for MGC. Here, we present a sixty-eight years old female MGC patient treated with surgery and adjuvant fluorouracil and leucovorin chemotherapy. Subtotal gastrectomy was performed. Dense lymphocytes and plasma cells containing scanty stroma and neoplastic cell clusters with tubuler differentiation were detected at the pathological examination. Six course of fluorouracil and folinic acid had been applied as adjuvant chemotherapy. She had no relapse until the 30 months of follow up. MGC is commonly seen in the sixth decade and had a male predominance. The disease tends to be located in distal parts of the stomach. Mean tumor size for MGC is bigger than well-differentiated gastric adeno carcinoma but smaller than scirrhous type gastric adeno carcinoma. Based on the successful experience in the present case, here we suggest the use of fluoropyrimidine based therapies in the early stage of MGC.