Ipn1 Clin OncoI1999;29(3)171-178 Primary Gastric T-cell Lymphomas: Report of Two Cases and a Review of the Literature

To understand more fully the clinicopathological features of primary gastric T-cell lymphomas (PGTL), we report two cases of PGTL and review the literature. The present cases were not associated withhuman T-celll.eukemia virustype1 (HTLV-1) andwereatclinical stageliE. Inboth cases, T-cell origin of the lymphoma cells was diagnosed immunohistochemically. The clinical courses of thesetwocaseswere different: onefollowed a veryaggressive clinical course andthe patientdied 6 months after the diagnosis, whereas the otherpatient survived morethan 2 years without adjuvant chemotherapy. Clinicopathological features of 23 patients with PGTL are summarized with regard to their differences from primary small intestinal T-cell lymphomas (PSITL) and by association with HTLV-1. The median age at onset of PGTLwas 58 years. The gender ratio was male-dominant (M:F = 2.3:1). About two-thirds (10 of 17) of PGTL cases had evidence of HTLV-1 infection. The most common presenting symptom for PGTL was upper abdominal discomfort and/or pain (76%), whereas that in PSITL was weight loss (61 %) and diarrhea (42%). Typical lesions for PGTL were large ulcerations at the corpus to antrum. Neoplastic cells had no typical morphological characteristics for PGTL including HTLV-1-asso-ciated cases. CD3+4+8- was the most frequently observed surface phenotype of PGTL cells