Extensive cutaneous metastasis of recurrent gastric cancer: A case report

BACKGROUND: Cutaneous metastasis is a rare event associated with poor prognosis for gastric cancer and has been rarely reported in the literature. CASE SUMMARY: A 69-year-old male patient who had undergone salvage gastrectomy and a few courses of adjuvant chemotherapy 3 mo earlier for recurrent gastric cancer developed widespread cutaneous metastases. Due to the patient’s intolerance to further adjuvant chemotherapy, he was placed in hospice care and expired 1 mo later. In the literature, gastric cancers are rarely reported as the primary malignancies for cutaneous metastasis. We, thus, provide an update on a case review published in 2014 by reviewing 10 more case reports dated from 2014 to 2020. The average age for the new group of patients was 59.4 ± 18.88-years-old. Thirty percent of the patients presented with cutaneous lesions and advanced gastric cancer synchronously while 70% developed cutaneous metastases 1.3 years to 14 years after the initial treatment for primary gastric cancer. Eighty percent of the patients received either local excision or chemo ± radiation therapy to treat their cutaneous metastases. CONCLUSION: This report highlights cutaneous metastasis as a late and untreatable metastasis of gastric cancer.