Gastric Fibroma with Eosinophilic Infiltration.

Benign gastric tumours are infrequent. In Eusterman and Senty's (1922) series they amounted to about 0-6% of all gastric neoplasms. A higher incidence has been observed by other workers. Lockwood (1932) encountered benign gastric neoplasms in 45% of his cases, Eliason and Wright (1925) in 4.12%, Marshall (1955) in 4-8%, and Stout (1953) in 16-9% (the last high figure no doubt being due to selected material). The majority of benign tumours of the stomach are epithelial in origin, and are either sessile adenomas or pedunculated papillomas. Some authors also include hypertrophic gastritis under this heading. Carcinoids should be regarded as malignant neoplasms (Lattes and Grossi, 1956). The mesenchymal variants of benign gastric neoplasms, in descending order of frequency, are leiomyoma and neurilemoma (which are not always histologically separable), haemangioma, fibroma, and lipoma (Tanner, 1950). Other benign tumours, such as ganglioneuroma (Dahl, Waugh, and Dahlin, 1957), dermoid (Balfour and Henderson, 1927; Tanner, 1950), teratoma (Willis, 1962), glomus tumour, granular cell myoblastoma, and lymphangioma (Stout, 1953), are so rare as to constitute curiosities. The gastric wall may also be involved in neurofibromatosis (Stout), and ectopic pancreatic tissue may form non-neoplastic mural masses. Fibromas are considered to be rare. Thus Minnes and Geschickter (1936) found only one fibroma amongst 50, and Eusterman and Senty (1922) five fibromas amongst 27 benign gastric lesions. Stout (1953) does not list a single case of fibroma amongst 110 cases of benign gastric neoplasms, although mentioning four inflammatory polypi and five eosinophilic granulomas. This paper records a submucous fibroma of the cardia.