Papillary adenocarcinoma of the stomach with psammoma bodies: report of two cases

Calcification of gastric carcinoma is unusual and most of the reported cases were of the mucinous type. This report describes two cases of papillo-tubular adenocarcinoma of the stomach with psammomatous calcification confined only to the papillary portion. Calcification was so heavy that specimen X-ray was able to clearly delineate its distribution. Microscopically, the calcification was confined to the papillary carcinoma area and was not found in the area of the tubular adenocarcinoma. Polymorphic calcific bodies were found in the supportive stroma of papillae and extrapapillary spaces as concentrically laminated psammoma bodies. They were also found in tumor cells as minute corpuscles. The mechanism of neoplastic mineralization in these cases seemed different from ontogenic calcification of mucinous gastric carcinoma and we postulated the mechanism of psammomatous calcification which is referred as intracellular calcification.