REVIEWARTICLE Optimizing Surgical and Imatinib Therapy for the Treatment of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

# 2013 The Author(s). This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Introduction The discovery of activating KIT and PDGFRα mutations in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) represented a milestone as it allowed clinicians to use tyrosine kinase inhibitors, like imatinib, to treat this sarcoma. Although surgery remains the only potentially curative treatment, patients who undergo complete resection may still experience local recurrence or distant metastases. Therapeutic strategies that combine surgical resection and adjuvant imatinib may represent the best treatment to maximize patient outcomes. In addition to the use of imatinib in the adjuvant and metastatic settings, neoadjuvan