A 52-year-old man suffering from a pure-type primary gastric small cell carcinoma was treated with surgery and combination chemotherapy. The small cell carcinoma, approximately 6.5 cm in diameter, was situated in the posterior wall of the antrum and there were no distant metastases. Total gastrectomy and regional lymph node dissection was carried out. Histological examination revealed a solid pattern of proliferation of small cells with hyperchromatic, round nuclei and scant cytoplasm. Neoplastic cells infiltrated into the subserosal layer with severe lymphatic and vascular invasion. Regional lymph node cells were mostly replaced by tumor cells that stained positive for Grimelius, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), and synaptophysin. Accumulations of electron-dense core granules in the small neoplastic cells were seen by electron microscopy. Following surgery, the patient was treated with adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of cisplatin and etoposide. The patient is alive and recurrence free 3 years after surgical operation. We review 107 published cases of primary gastric small cell carcinoma, an extremely rare disease first reported in 1976. Small cell carcinoma is an aggressive, malignant tumor. Intensive chemotherapy is essential for patient survival even when curative surgical resection is carried out.

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For early detection of recurrence and successful endoscopic cure, further colonoscopic examination within a few months after the first treatment is necessary.

The fluorescence lifetime of a triphenylmethane dye, malachite green, doped in three glass-forming associated solvents, 1-propanol, propylene glycol, and glycerol, was measured in a wide temperature range. For each sample three temperature regimes were found in the temperature dependence of the nonradiative relaxation time of malachite green. The lower crossover temperature corresponds to the calorimetric glass transition temperature, and the higher one, 30-50 K above the lower one, is attributed to the critical temperature that is predicted by mode-coupling theory.

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