Occurrence of the primary malignant tumors of the small bowel was said to be much rarer than the other gastrointestinal tract.
There has been 10 cases of primary, malignant small bowel tumors in Seoul Red Cross Hospital during last 7 years from 1968 to 1974. During the same period, we had 249 cases of -the stomach cancer, 74 cases of the colorectal cancer, 166 cases of the hepatobiliary tract cancer and
540 cases of the all gastrointestinal malignant neoplasms, including the esophagus, pancreas, peritoneum and mesentery. According to above data, the incidence of the small bowel malignant tumor was 4.01% of the stomach cancer, 13.4% of the colon cancer, 6.12% of the hepatobiliary tract cancer and 1.85% of the all gastrointestinal tract malignant tumors.
The mean age of the patients were 41 year and 60% of the cases were between 25 to 55 years.
All the patients were symptomatic. Abdominal pain and gastrointestinal troubles, including nausea, vomiting, anorexia, abdominal fullness were the-most common symptoms. The average symptom duration was 3 months. Only 2 patients in 10 had uncomplicated tumors and others had various complications, preoperatively, such as mechanical obstruction of the small intestine, intussusception, small .bowel perforation, obstruction of ampulla of Vater, sepsis; etc.
Radiologically detectable cases of the tumor were only one in 7 that had performed GI series with contrast media, therefore, we could establish correct diagnosis preoperatively in only 1 cases in 10.
We could apply surgical treatment for the all and for 6 of them, clinically curative resection could be undergone.
Early postoperative hospital death within 3 weeks occurred in a 3 and 2 expired within 15 months postoperatively and 1 survives until now for 2 years without any evidence of tumor recurrence and the remaining 4-were lost to follow-up. The cause of early postoperative death were the preexisting grave complications, those were, panperitonitis, pneumonia and-fulminating sepsis in 2 and postoperative gastric bleeding due to stress ulcer n l. Two, death within 15 months seemed to be due to regrowth of tumors.
We report these cases with the reference of the literatures.
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