Management of early asymptomatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors of the stomach.

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are the most common mesenchymal tumors of the digestive tract. Approximately two thirds of clinically manifest tumors occur in the stomach, nearly one third in the small bowel, and the rest in the colorectal region with a few cases in the esophagus. GIST originate within the smooth muscle layer in the wall of the tubular gastrointestinal tract and grow mostly toward the serosa, far less often toward the mucosa. In the latter case, ulceration may develop and can cause gastrointestinal bleeding as the cardinal symptom. However, most GIST of the stomach are asymptomatic. They are increasingly detected incidentally as small intramural or submucosal tumors during endoscopy and particularly during endoscopic ultrasound. Epidemiological and molecular genetic findings suggest that early asymptomatic GIST of the stomach (< 1 cm) show self-limiting tumorigenesis. Thus, early (< 1 cm) asymptomatic gastric GIST (synonym: micro-GIST) are found in 20%-30% of the elderly. The mostly elderly people with early gastric GIST have an excellent GIST-specific prognosis. Patients with early GIST of the stomach can therefore be managed by endoscopic surveillance.