Gastric Somatostatinoma: An Extremely Rare Cause of Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Abstract

A 49-year-old woman presented with chronic abdominal discomfort, significant weight loss, and chronic intermittent diarrhea. She suddenly developed massive upper gastrointestinal bleeding and was referred for further treatment. Endoscopy indicated a large mass in the upper gastric body with antral and duodenal bulb involvement. Endosonography showed a large well-defined isoechoic gastric subepithelial mass with multiple intra-abdominal and peripancreatic lymphadenopathy, suspected to be malignant on the basis of fine needle aspiration cytology. The tumor was surgically removed, and histopathology showed typical characteristics of a neuroendocrine tumor. On the basis of immunohistochemical staining, somatostatinoma, a rare neuroendocrine tumor, was diagnosed. Gastrointestinal bleeding is a rare presentation and the stomach is an uncommon tumor location.

Somatostatinoma: Beyond neurofibromatosis type 1 (Review)

“…Pancreas site is involved in 70% of all the somatostatin producing tumours (36% at head level, 14% at the body, and 32% at the pancreatic tail) in addition to 19% at the duodenum area, 3% at ampulla of Vater, and 3% at small bowel, while exceptional localisations at pulmonary area, thyroid lobes or renal parenchyma have been reported (21)(22)(23). Gastric location complicated with gastrointestinal bleeding is also uncommon (24). Somatostatinoma has been reported in association with genetic conditions.…”