Because of the complexity of naming cancer, usually the people say stomach cancer and lung cancer are classified according to the different tissues and organs where cancer develops, however, when some names have pathological characteristics, people will be puzzled, such as gastrointestinal tract mesenchymal tumor, since it has tumor, it should be a type of tumor, but according to the different degrees of harm, tumors are divided into benign tumors and malignant tumors (cancer), this tumor is Which category does this tumor belong to? Some patients have poor psychological ability to bear it, and they put themselves under great psychological pressure before finding out the facts, which leads to adverse effects on treatment. Yesterday I received a text message from a patient, “Hello, Director Zhao, my father was diagnosed with gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor not long ago, and I heard that gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor is an aggressive tumor, and cancer is also aggressive. Is gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor a cancer?” In this regard, the following answers are given for the benefit of patients. Gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor is not cancer, but it is an aggressive tumor with malignant tendency, which is similar to cancer, or what we call junctional tumor. Such junctional tumors are in between good and evil and have benign cellular form, but they are prone to recurrence and even turn into malignant tumors, which require timely and regular treatment. Among the patients with gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor in China, 60%-70% of them have their tumors in the stomach, 20%-30% have their tumors in the small intestine, and very few have their tumors in the esophagus, colon and rectum. However, gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors are not the same as stomach or intestinal cancer. Cancer is a malignant tumor that occurs in the epithelial tissue and is characterized by infiltrative growth, easy recurrence and multiple metastases. In contrast, gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor is a tumor that occurs in the mesenchymal tissue of the gastrointestinal tract, and its tumor tissue is not as aggressive as cancer and rarely metastasizes to lymph or blood. However, gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor has the following characteristics that cannot be ignored: 1. Insensitive to conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy At present, the main clinical treatment for gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor is surgical resection, at this time, it is recommended to use surgery and biological therapy, which can make up for the shortage of surgery and solve the shortage of treatment intensity caused by the inability of chemotherapy. Although the survival rate of early gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor patients is high at 5 years after surgery, the recurrence rate of gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor patients after surgery can be as high as 40%-90% as the time of onset increases. Moreover, once patients with gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor relapse after surgery, their survival time is generally only 10-20 months. 3. Early diagnosis is not easy Because the early symptoms of gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor are not obvious, so this disease is difficult to be detected in early stage, especially for this tumor with diameter less than 2 cm in early stage. Many people are found to have gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor when they have tumor screening, physical examination or other surgeries. However, there are a few patients with this disease who may present with gastrointestinal bleeding, abdominal pain, abdominal masses, anemia, and intestinal obstruction at an early stage. Currently, the diagnosis of gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor is mainly confirmed clinically through imaging examinations, including fiberoptic endoscopy, endoscopic ultrasound, ultrasound and CT. Of particular note, recent studies have found that Asian patients are 1.5 times more likely than other patient groups to be diagnosed with this type of tumor, and that Asians are more likely to develop gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors than other populations.