A 66-year-old female presented with pains in swallowing solid foods and scraping behind the sternum. X-ray examination, esophag-oscopy, guided biopsy and contact cytology indicated a squamous cell carcinoma in situ type II a. The diagnosis was confirmed by histological examination of the resected esophagus, which revealed that the cancerous infiltration was limited to the mucosa. The findings in our case were compared with reports in the literature. As in our cases published by Japanese authors, the combination of all known diagnostic methods is necessary in order to recognize an early stage of esophageal cancer; endoscopy with guided biopsy and cytology seem to be the most important procedures for detection. To our knowledge, the case reported in this paper is the first one outside of Japan which has been diagnosed correctly by X-ray, endoscopy, guided biopsy and contact cytology prior to operation.

A 44-year-old man presented with epigastric pains of one month's duration. X-ray examination and gastroscopy suggested an early gastric cancer type II c in the upper part of the stomach, but guided biopsy and cytology showed no malignant signs. Histological examination of the resected