[Adenocarcinoma and gastro-intestinal stromal tumor: fortuitous association or a single carcinogenic agent? A report of 2 cases].

The synchronous development of epithelial and stromal tumors of the digestive tract was rarely reported in the literature. Two such cases are described in this article. One is of a 44-year-old man presenting a high grade gastric stromal tumor associated with an adenocarcinoma of the large bowel. The other is of a 68-year-old man presenting an adenocarcinoma of the head of the pancreas associated with a low grade gastric stromal tumor. The hypothesis that the association is due to a simple coincidence particularly in areas with high rates of digestive cancer is proposed. A possibility of a genetic mutation or a single carcinogenic agent interacting with two tissues in the digestive tract and inducing the development of tumors of different histotype cannot be discarded.