A Review of Type III Gastroesophageal Junction Adenocarcinoma and the Importance of Early Detection of Gastric Cancer

Gastric adenocarcinoma is the most common type of gastric cancer in the United States. Multiple factors can predispose a patient to develop such a malignancy, including having a history of infection, tobacco use, alcohol use, specific genetic mutations, and being of Asian or Hispanic descent. Surgery is currently the only curative treatment for localized disease. With metastatic disease, the rate of survival decreases significantly, and most often, the only treatment option is palliative chemotherapy with or without combination radiation therapy. In the case of a 58-year-old man diagnosed with a gastroesophageal junction type III gastric adenocarcinoma that extended into the distal esophagus, what was thought to be a resectable tumor had already invaded vital neighboring organs, therefore, we were unable to eradicate the disease from this patient.