Rare case of early mucosal gastric cancer presenting with metastasis to the bulbar conjunctiva.
Early gastric cancer has an excellent outcome following surgical treatment. In particular, mucosal gastric cancer (m-cancer) very rarely results in metastatic dissemination and may be successfully treated by local surgical resection. We report a 64-year-old Japanese woman who presented with a recurrent cystic lesion on the left bulbar conjunctiva, with a biopsy specimen revealing metastatic signet-ring cell carcinoma. Gastrointestinal investigations revealed an early gastric cancer in the lesser curvature of the stomach. Biopsy specimen of the gastric lesion indicated poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma, which was identical to findings in the lesion in the bulbar conjunctiva. She underwent a distal gastrectomy and made an uneventful recovery. Histopathological analysis indicated a gastric signet-ring cell carcinoma that was limited to the mucosal layer, without evidence of lymphatic spread. Although the exact mechanism of metastatic dissemination to the bulbar conjunctiva is unclear, this case is very unusual, because ocular metastases almost invariably occur in the context of documented and established malignant disease. This is, to our knowledge, the first reported case of a patient with gastric mucosal cancer who presented with a conjunctival metastatic deposit and who subsequently received curative surgical treatment for both conditions.
Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-8582, Japan.
Jo
J
Tokuyama
Tetsuro
T
Kubota
Yoshihide
Y
Otani
Tomohisa
T
Egawa
Norihito
N
Wada
Koichiro
K
Kumai
Yoshinori
Y
Sugino
Yukihiro
Y
Mashima
Yu
Y
Nakamura
Makio
M
Mukai
Hiromasa
H
Ishii
Masaki
M
Kitajima
D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000556:secondary* / Q000601:surgery; D003230:Conjunctival Neoplasms / Q000556:secondary*; D005260:Female; D005753:Gastric Mucosa / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery