How are giant gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors treated?

  Patient Wu Sheng, male, 49 years old, presented to our hospital with upper abdominal fullness for more than 2 months. During his visit to an outside hospital, imaging revealed a huge mass in the left abdominal cavity, and a mesenchymal tissue source was considered. The patient had been transferred to several tertiary hospitals in the province for consultation, but no further treatment was performed due to the huge mass, rich blood supply, inability to remove it intraoperatively or fear of hemorrhage and death by shock. However, the patient had a strong desire for survival and finally came to our hospital by name, where he was seen by Professor Chen Tao of the Department of General Surgery.  After admission abdominal CT examination, the patient found a huge left abdominal mass, about 32×23×20 cm, with multiple reinforcing vascular shadows seen in enhancement; the right edge of the mass was indistinctly decomposed from the liver, and the left hepatic artery wrapped around the right edge of the mass and branched into the mass; and wrapped part of the spleen downward, and the splenic artery was compressed and shifted downward and branched into the mass; the left kidney and pancreas were pushed backward; a mass shadow was seen in the interstitial space of the liver and kidney, and the tumor was considered Metastatic foci. Combining with the development of the patient’s condition and examination results, Prof. Chen Tao communicated with the patient and his family for many times, explaining the risk of surgery, death by intraoperative haemorrhage and postoperative multi-organ decay, etc. However, the patient had a positive and optimistic attitude towards life and a strong desire to live, and insisted on surgery.  Due to the patient’s huge tumor, rich blood supply, and invasion of many important tissues and organs such as liver, kidney, spleen and intestine in the abdominal cavity, his condition was serious. Under the multidisciplinary consultation of radiology, urology, SCIU, anesthesiology and the guidance of Prof. Qingjia Au, Prof. Tao Chen performed a giant abdominal mass resection + pancreatic tail resection + splenectomy on October 26, 201. With the cooperation of the anesthesia department, the patient’s condition was basically stable during the operation. After dissection, we saw a huge mass with extremely rich blood supply and furious surface vascularization (see Figure 3). Since it was easy to bleed when separating the mass from the surrounding tissues, Prof. Chen Tao first found and ligated the main blood supply artery of the tumor, after which the bleeding decreased significantly until the tumor was completely removed. The operation lasted about 180 minutes, with 3000 ml of intraoperative bleeding, 14 u of red blood cells and 1400 ml of plasma transfusion. After 2 weeks of postoperative care and treatment, the patient is now in stable condition and recovered smoothly. Postoperative pathological examination confirmed that the patient had a gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor (very high risk). However, it is rare to find such a huge mesenchymal tumor as this patient.  The main symptoms of GIST depend on the size and location of the tumor, and are usually non-specific, including abdominal pain, masses, gastrointestinal bleeding and gastrointestinal obstruction. There are four risk classes according to the size of the tumor and the number of nuclear schizophrenia in pathological examination. This type of tumor is mostly rich in blood supply and has a higher risk of intraoperative hemorrhage, while surgical resection is the preferred and only possible curative treatment for gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors. For patients with unresectable tumors, patients unable to tolerate surgery, intraoperative tumor rupture, postoperative tumor recurrence and metastasis, and those with intermediate or high risk, oral Gleevec should be administered as adjuvant anti-tumor therapy. Gleevec is specifically used as a targeted therapy drug for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia and malignant gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors. Common adverse effects include edema, diarrhea, nausea, and rash, but all of them can be alleviated by symptomatic management.  Under the leadership of Professor Qingjia Au, a veteran general surgeon, our comprehensive surgery department has been innovating surgical techniques and skillfully carrying out diagnosis and treatment of various diseases of liver, biliary tract, pancreas, gastrointestinal tract, etc. We have become comfortable in surgical treatment of benign and malignant tumors of gastrointestinal tract such as gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor, gastric cancer and intestinal cancer, and we can easily deal with difficult and critical cases such as huge abdominal masses.