Metastasis to skeletal muscle from gastric adenocarcinoma: a case report and literature review

Gastric carcinoma is one of the most common malignancies in the world, but skeletal muscle metastatic lesions arising from gastric carcinoma are rare. We report here a rare case of an 87-year-old female patient with skeletal metastasis following surgery of gastric carcinoma. Gastroscopy examination showed a tumor located in the anastomotic stoma and gastric biopsy demonstrated poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma. The patient underwent total gastrectomy and Roux-en-Y reconstruction with D2 lymph node resection, followed by subsequent chemotherapy. Four months after the operation, the patient developed a left gluteal mass. After surgical resection of the mass, pathological examination showed a metastasis from gastric adenocarcinoma for the mass. After a systemic examination using ultrasonography, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), no other metastatic lesions were found. No additional chemotherapy or radiotherapy was applied thereafter. The patient recovered well after surgery and did not show any signs of relapse during the follow-up period. Unfortunately, she died of a traffic accident nine months after resection of the metastatic mass. In order to get a better understanding of its incidence, clinical manifestation, diagnosis, therapy and prognosis, we further reviewed 13 cases of skeletal muscle metastases from gastric carcinoma worldwide since 1984.