Esophageal granular cell tumors: report of 9 cases and a literature review.

Esophageal granular cell tumors (GCTs) are rare tumors of the esophagus. We evaluated the clinical and pathologic features of 9 esophageal GCT patients (5 men and 4 women) from our institute and reviewed the related disease literature. Patient age ranged from 25 to 53 years (mean: 41 years). All the patients were asymptomatic or presented with non-specific symptoms. Most GCTs occurred in the distal esophagus and were less than 6 mm in diameter. Computational analysis showed that the average gray-scale endoscopic ultrasound images of esophageal GCTs were greater than that of esophageal leiomyomas. Eight patients were treated by endoscopic resection, and 1 patient underwent surgical excision. No post-therapy recurrence or metastasis developed during follow-up (mean: 36.4 mo, range: 1-72 mo). (C) 2012 Baishideng. All rights reserved.