Clinical and phenotypical characteristics of submucosal invasive carcinoma in non-ampullary duodenal cancer

The rare incidence of submucosal invasive non-ampullary duodenal carcinoma has led to scant information in literature; therefore, we compared the clinicopathological features between submucosal invasive carcinoma (SM-Ca), mucosal carcinoma (M-Ca), and advanced carcinoma (Ad-Ca). We retrospectively analyzed 165 patients with sporadic non-ampullary duodenal carcinomas (SNADCs) from four institutions between January 2003 and December 2018. The SNADCs were divided to three groups according to histological diagnosis: SM-Ca, M-Ca, and Ad-Ca. The clinicopathological characteristics and mucin phenotypes were compared between groups. Among the 165 SNADCs, 11 (7%) were classified as SM-Ca, 70 (42%) as M-Ca, and 84 (51%) as Ad-Ca. We found that all SM-Ca (P = 0.013) and most Ad-Ca (P = 0.020) lesions were located on the oral-Vater; however, an almost equal distribution of M-Ca lesions was found between the oral- and anal-Vater. No significant difference was observed between the tumor diameter of M-Ca and SM-Ca; however, 45% (5/11) of SM-Ca were ≤10 mm. A total of 73% (8/11) of SM-Ca were classified as gastric phenotype and no lesions were classified as intestinal phenotype; whereas most M-Ca were classified as intestinal phenotype (67%, 8/12). SM-Ca lesions were all located on the oral-Vater and were highly associated with the gastric mucin phenotype, which were different from the features of most M-Ca.