Clinical Evaluation of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor

Min, Byung Wook; Kim, Seung Joo; Mok, Young Jae; Kim, Chong Suk

Abstract

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to analyze the outcome of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) cases treated in our hospital.
METHODS
The case studies of 43 patients who had been treated for primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor from 1990 to 1999 in Korea University Guro Hospital were evaluated retrospectively. The clinical characteristics analyzed included patient age, sex, tumor location, and size; while also analyzed was the 5-year survival rate according to tumor location, size and malignancy in order to identify the factors that predict survival.
RESULTS
Tumor locations were stomach (31 cases), small bowel (11 cases) and colon (1 case). The malignant GISTs comprised 22 cases, borderline GISTs 5 cases and benign GISTs 16 cases. The overall 5-year patient survival rate was 83.3% and the 5-year survival rates according to dgree of malignancy were 100% (benign and borderline GISTs) and 68.1% (malignant GISTs, p=0.026). The 5-year survival rates according to tumor size were 100% (tumor size smaller than 5 cm) and 70.8% (tumor size larger than 5 cm, p=0.015). The 5-year survival rate was not related to tumor location to a statistically significant extent.
CONCLUSION
GISTs are infrequently encountered tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. Tumor size was found to be the most important factor for survival prediction in the clinical situation and hence the complete resection of tumors especially those larger than 5 cm, will improve the treatment outcome for GISTs.