Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 21, 2016; 22(11): 3296-3301
Published online Mar 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i11.3296
Primary advanced esophago-gastric melanoma: A rare case
Lin Wang, Liang Zong, Hidetsugu Nakazato, Wen-Yue Wang, Chao-Feng Li, Yan-Fen Shi, Guo-Chao Zhang, Tao Tang
Lin Wang, Peking University China-Japan Friendship School of Clinical Medicine, Beijing 100029, China
Liang Zong, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan
Hidetsugu Nakazato, Department of Surgery, Okinawa Red Cross Hospital, Okinawa 902-8588, Japan
Wen-Yue Wang, Chao-Feng Li, Guo-Chao Zhang, Tao Tang, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China
Yan-Fen Shi, Department of Pathology, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China
Author contributions: Wang WY and Zong L designed the study; Wang L, Li CF, Shi YF, Zhang GC and Tang T did the experiment and collected the data; Wang L, Wang WY and Zong L wrote the manuscript; Zong L and Nakazato H revised the manuscript; Wang L and Zong L contributed equally to this study.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the China-Japan Friendship Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Informed written consent was obtained prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declared that there is no conflict of interest related to this study.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Wen-Yue Wang, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, No. 2 Yinghua East Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100029, China. wwenyue080@163.com
Telephone: +86-10-84205442 Fax: +86-10-64203096
Received: November 3, 2015
Peer-review started: November 4, 2015
First decision: November 27, 2015
Revised: December 28, 2015
Accepted: January 9, 2016
Article in press: January 11, 2016
Published online: March 21, 2016
Abstract

Primary esophageal or gastric melanoma is a very rare disease with early metastasis. Due to its atypical symptom and less efficiency of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the prognosis of esophageal or gastric melanoma is still very poor. Surgical resection remains the preferential treatment for esophageal or gastric melanoma. Here we present an extremely rare case of primary advanced esophago-gastric melanoma. Debulking surgery was performed without chemotherapy or radiotherapy. However, abdominal recurrence and hepatic metastases were found within one month by a postoperative follow-up computed tomography. Three and a half months after surgical resection, the patient died of extensive abdominal metastasis.

Keywords: Malignant melanoma, Esophago-gastric junction, Surgery, Chemotherapy, Prognosis

Core tip: Primary malignant digestive melanoma is a very rare disease with poor prognosis. Here we report an extremely rare and advanced case of primary esophago-gastric melanoma. Although the effect of combination strategy of surgical resection with chemotherapy or radiotherapy is still unclear, we strongly recommend a postoperative chemotherapy or radiotherapy due to the fast progression and extremely short survival of our case.