Multiple Gastric Cancers

Summary A study has been made of 40 cases of multiple simultaneous gastric cancers seen at the Mayo Clinic during a 10-year period. These cases represent 2.2 per cent of all instances of gastric cancer encountered during this period. Two additional cases were encountered that apparently represent examples of multiple nonsimultaneous gastric cancers. Three of these 42 patients also had pernicious anemia and 4 had associated gastric polyposis. Two patients had one or more malignant tumors that were entirely independent of the multiple gastric cancers. It is reasonable to assume that a significant proportion of gastric cancers present multicentric zones of malignant change at some phase of their development, a concept that is of some practical clinical importance.