Depressed adenoma of the stomach

Abstract

A “depressed adenoma” was detected in surgically removed stomachs. There were 40 such lesions (11%) of a total of 357 lesions of gastric adenomas. Macroscopically, these lesions often occurred along the lesser curvature of the stomach, had shallow depressions of a light‐brown color, a round or oval shape with irregular margins, and could hardly be distinguished from a depressed early carcinoma. Although 14 of the lesions were detected preoperatively with confirmation by endoscopic biopsy, the other 26 remained unrecognized until the gross examination of the formalin‐fixed specimens. Histologically, all were tubular adenomas of the intestinal type with varying degrees of epithelial atypia. Carcinoma in adenoma was present in 5% of these depressed lesions, in contrast to 2.5% of the conventional protruded adenoma. Thus, depressed adenoma seems to be a variant of gastric adenoma which has a somewhat higher malignant potential. Copyright © 1988 American Cancer Society