Wandering chordoma--a mid-line crisis?

An unusual presentation of chordoma as a pyloric ring submucosal tumor: The first case report of a primary gastrointestinal lesion in humans

Introduction and importance

Chordomas are rare malignant bone neoplasms that are presumed to arise from chordal remnants in the fetal stage and typically occur along the axial skeleton. The extra-skeletal chordomas reported to date include soft tissue of the extremities and nasopharynx. Chordoma arising from the gastrointestinal wall has not been previously described.

Case presentation

We report on a 42-year-old man with primary chordoma presenting as a gastroduodenal submucosal tumor centered on the pyloric ring. The patient was consistently asymptomatic, and the tumor was an incidental finding. However, during a follow-up at approximately 1.6 years, an increase in tumor size was identified on computed tomography (CT), and surgical resection was performed without a definite pathologic diagnosis. The patient was successfully treated with distal gastrectomy, and the histological diagnosis was a conventional chordoma. The diagnosis was confirmed via immunohistochemical staining for brachyury, pan-cytokeratin, S-100, and SOX9. Postoperative CT and magnetic resonance imaging revealed no recurrence or metastasis during the 1.5-year follow-up period.

Clinical discussion

Primary chordomas of the digestive tract are rare. Embryologic development of the notochord does not explain the existence of remnants in the gastrointestinal wall. Moreover, notochordal remnants, as precursors of chordoma, were not identified in the current case. The gastroduodenal chordoma may not have originated from embryonic notochordal remnants but through aberrant brachyury activation without a notochordal precursor.

Conclusion

We report the first case of primary gastrointestinal chordoma in humans. The tumor was completely removed surgically, without postoperative recurrence.

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This is a case of primary gastrointestinal submucosal chordoma in a 42-year-old man

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Chordoma is a rare bony tumor that most frequently affects the axial skeleton

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Extra-skeletal chordomas are extremely rare in any species

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This is the first report of primary chordoma of the digestive tract in humans

Proximal tibial extra-axial chordoma masquerading as renal cell carcinoma metastasis

Chordomas are rare, locally aggressive notochordal tumors, which most frequently occur in the neuraxis. We describe the case of a 74-year-old male with a history of renal cell carcinoma, who presented with a slowly enlarging mass in his left leg. While the clinical history and imaging suggested metastatic renal cell carcinoma, immunohistochemical staining with brachyury ultimately made the diagnosis of extra-axial chordoma. At 74 years of age, our patient is the oldest ever reported with bony extra-axial chordoma objectively confirmed by brachyury staining. A detailed case discussion and a review of the available literature on this rare clinicopathologic entity are provided.

Brachyury: a diagnostic marker for the differential diagnosis of chordoma and hemangioblastoma versus neoplastic histological mimickers

Brachyury is a transcription factor which is required for posterior mesoderm formation and differentiation as well as for notochord development during embryogenesis. Due to its expression in the neoplastic cells of chordoma, a malignant tumour deriving from notochordal remnants, but not in tumors showing a similar histology, brachyury has been proposed as a diagnostic marker of this neoplasia. Though commonly considered a hallmark of chordoma, the expression of brachyury has been also documented in the stromal cells of hemangioblastoma (HBL), a slow growing tumor which may involve the central nervous system (CNS) and, rarely, the kidney. Herein we review the role of brachyury immunohistochemical detection in the identification and differential diagnosis of chordoma and HBL towards histological mimickers and suggest that brachyury is added to the panel of immunohistochemical markers for the recognition of HBL in routinary practice, principally in unusual sites.