Endoscopic diagnosis and treatment of primary gastrointestinal malignant lymphoma

Objective To summarize the endoscopic characteristics of Primary Gastrointestinal Malignant Lymphoma (PGIML) and increase the diagnostic accuracy of this method to aid the clinical treatment.Methods The clinical data of 67 cases with PGIML from 2004 to 2009 were studied retrospectively.Results PGIML lacked specific clinical symptoms.The main clinical symptoms were abdominal pain, melena and abdominal mass.In our study, most PGIML(37/67,55.8％) were detected in stomach.Nodular appearance of mucosal surface was the most common endoscopic finding.The positive rate of endoscopic biopsy for the diagnosis of PGIML was 68.7 ％ (46/67 biopsy cases).All cases had Non-Hogkin Lymphoma (NHL).The most common immunophenotype was B-cell majority (50/67).Thirty cases had MALT.Conclusion It is hard to diagnose PGIML at early stage,combination of various diagnosis tests should be considered to solve this problem.The effectiveness of surgery on PGIML should be further confirmed by prospective randomized clinical trials. Key words: Malignant lymphoma;  Gastrointestinal tract;  Endoscopic diagnosis