A clinical case of signet ring cell carcinoma of stomach in a child. Endoscopic diagnostics

Malignant neoplasms (MNP) of the gastrointestinal tract in children are extremely rare and account for 1.2 % of all MNP. According to world literature, the incidence of gastric cancer is no more than 0.05 % of all cases of MNP of the gastrointestinal tract in children. In national and foreign literature, only isolated cases of stomach cancer in children and adolescents aged 10 to 18 years are described. Clinical manifestations of the disease, as in patients over the age of 18, are non-specific – epigastric pain, loss of appetite, weight loss, ascites, anemia, melena and others. In this regard, the diagnosis occurs at the late stages of the disease and, therefore, is characterized by an unfavorable prognosis. Gastric signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) is an uncommon histologic subtype of adenocarcinoma and usually occurs in people aged 20 to 40 years. We would like to report an extremely rare case of SRCC in a 14-year-old child.