Epidemiology and Survival Analysis of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors in Lebanon: Real-life study from a Hospital tumor registry 2000-2015.

BACKGROUND: We report, to our knowledge, one of the largest studies concerning gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) in the Middle East. We also present a survival analysis of GIST in our 15-year real-life experience.

METHODS: We studied demographic, epidemiologic and survival characteristics of 70 patients with confirmed GIST in a cross-sectional study between 2000 and 2015.

RESULTS: The median age of our patients was 62 ±12.8 years (range, 25-84) with a male to female ratio of 1.7. The gastric and the small intestine GIST were the most frequent primary sites. The majority of our patients had localized disease at diagnosis (81.4%). Metastasis was limited to the abdominal cavity and lymph node spreading occurred in 14.3%. After a median follow up of 838 days (range 48-4309 days) with only two patients reported dead, two and five-year overall survival rates were 98% and 95% respectively. Median overall survival was not reached.

CONCLUSION: In the light of our results, molecular profiling of Lebanese patients with GIST would be of interest to detect the particularities responsible for the increased overall survival and lymph node spreading.