Esophageal skip metastasis from an adenocarcinoma of the gastric cardia

Abstract

AbstractAlthough diffuse‐type gastric carcinomas sometimes spread within the esophageal mucosa, a distant skip metastasis from a gastric carcinoma to the esophagus wall has rarely been reported. We herein report the case of a patient found to have a carcinoma of the gastric cardia with a skip metastasis to the esophagus, approximately 10 cm distant from the esophagogastric junction. A 53‐year‐old man was admitted to our department suffering from a sudden hematemesis. An upper gastrointestinal endoscopic study revealed an infiltrative ulcerating tumor of the gastric cardia and a small, reddish, elevated submucosal tumor on the middle third of the esophagus, apart from the tumor on the cardia. A histological study of the biopsy specimens from both tumors showed poorly differentiated adenocarcinomas. The patient underwent total thoracic esophagectomy and proximal gastrectomy combined with a splenectomy through a cervicoabdominal approach. The resected specimen contained a tumor of the cardia, 7.4 × 5.1 cm in area, that had infiltrated the submucosal layers of the lower esophagus up to 2.0 cm from the esophagogastric junction. The skip metastases were located 0.5, 4 and 7.2 cm from the oral side of the main tumor.