Intramuscular metastasis from gastric cancer

Abstract

Skeletal muscle is an uncommon site of hematogenous metastasis of gastric carcinoma. We report here a rare case of gastric carcinoma with multiple intramuscular metastases. Our patient had advanced gastric carcinoma and complained of left gluteal induration with tenderness. Because magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed that the gluteal tumor showed iso-signal intensity on T1-weighted images and high signal intensity on T2-weighted images, with reticulated texture around the tumor, and the patient had advanced gastric carcinoma, we speculated that the tumor was an intramuscular metastatic tumor from primary gastric carcinoma. There were also multiple intramuscular metastatic lesions in both gluteal muscles on the MRI findings that were not detected by physical examination. Therefore, the patient underwent total gastrectomy with combined resection of spleen, with subsequent chemotherapy. Three months after the operation, we excised the gluteal tumor to alleviate the gluteal pain. Histological examinations confirmed that the gluteal tumor was a metastasis from primary gastric carcinoma.