Clinicopathological features and prognosis of mesenteric gastrointestinal stromal tumor: evaluation of a pooled case series

BACKGROUND: Due to the extremely rare incidence, data of clinicopathological features and prognosis of mesenteric gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are limited. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the clinicopathological features and prognosis of mesenteric GISTs. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Mesenteric GISTs cases were obtained from our center and from case reports and clinical series extracted from MEDLINE. Clinicopathological features and survivals were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 114 mesenteric GISTs were enrolled in present study. The most common symptom was abdominal pain (20/72, 27.8%), followed by abdominal mass (13/72, 18.1%) and distention (9/72, 12.5%). Most tumors exceeded 10 cm in diameter (71/112, 63.4%), exceeded 5/50HPF in mitotic index (50/85, 58.8%), and were high risk (82/90, 91.1%). The five-year disease free survival (DFS) and disease specific survival (DSS) was 57.7% and 60.1%, respectively. Tumor size and mitotic index were associated with DFS and DSS. The distribution of tumor size, histological type, mitotic index and NIH risk category were significantly different between mesenteric and gastric GISTs. Prognosis of mesenteric GISTs was worse than that of gastric GISTs. However, multivariate analysis showed that location was not an independent prognostic factor for mesenteric and gastric GISTs. CONCLUSIONS: Most mesenteric GISTs exceeded 10 cm in diameter, exceeded 5/50HPF in mitotic index and were high risk. Mesenteric GISTs differed significantly from gastric GISTs in respect to clinicopathologic features. Mitotic index and tumor size were prognostic factors for mesenteric GISTs. The prognosis were comparable between mesenteric and gastric GISTs.