Hepatoid Adenocarcinoma of the Stomach: A Pathologic Analysis of 14 cases

Kang, Gyeong Hoon; Kim, Yong Il

Abstract

Hepatoid adenocarcinoma of the stomach has been designated to a primary gastric adenocarcinoma with minimum criteria of elevated serum alpha-fetoprotein and its histological resemblance to neoplastic liver cells. Of the 1,500 consecutive cases of surgically resected gastric carcinomas during a period of 4 years, we retrieved 14 cases of adenocarcinoma which met the histologic features of hepatoid growth and compared them histologically with 400 consecutive cases of non-hepatoid gastric adenocarcinomas. The patient's age ragned from 32 to 80 years(non-hepatoid group: 25 to 81 years) and their male to female ratio was 3.7 : 1(non-hepatoid group: 1.8 : 1). Grossly, five case were Borrmann type II and another five cases type III. All three cases of early gastric carcinomas were the submucosal type IIc. The remaining one was an advanced gastric carcinoma mimicking early gastric carcinoma. Microscopically, the hepatoid portions varied in growing patterns and arranged in either compact, trabecular or pseudoglandular pattern and gave an immunoreactivity to alpha-fetoprotein and alpha-1-antichymotrypsin. Regardless of the tumor stage, the hepatoid areas were located in the deeper portion of the tumor mass and grew in an expanding/nodular pattern. The associated adenocarcinomatous areas were mostly papillotubular, moderately to well differentiated, and frequently revealed clear PAS-negative cytoplasm reminiscent of the differentiated embryonal carcinoma. Tumor emboli and nodal metastasis were the frequent associations. We assume that the hepatoid adenocarcinoma may develop from gastric'adenocarcinoma through embryonal carcinomatous growth.