Abstract

The gastric carcinoma displays various macroscopic appearances ranging from well defined protuberant to diffuse infiltrating tumors but its histological diagnosis is usually simple when performing an endoscopic biopsy. A few gastric cancinomas resemble submucosal tumors (SMT). A gastric carcinoma with a SMT-like appearance is extremely rare, and reportedly accounts for 0.1% to 0.63% of all resected gastric carcinomas in Japan. A histological diagnosis of a SMT-like gastric carcinoma by repeated endoscopic biopsies is often difficult as the tumors are almost entirely covered with normal mucosa. When one sees the lesions in an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, one should be careful about the location of depression, redness and coating that deviates from the top of the tumor. Here we report two cases of SMT-like gastric carcinomas, diagnosed by the usual endoscopic biopsy method and treated with surgery, with an accompanying review of the recent literature.

• Keywords: Submucosal tumor like gastric carcinoma, Lymphoid stroma