Current Concepts on Gastric Carcinoid Tumors

Table 2

Characteristics of gastric carcinoid tumors.

	Type I	Type II	Type III
Proportion of gastric carcinoids	70%–80%—most common	Less than 5%	15%–20%
Associations	Chronic atrophic gastritis, pernicious anemia	MEN-1, Zollinger-Ellison syndrome	Sporadic carcinoid syndrome
Epidemiology	Typically women 50–70 yrs old	Family history of MEN-1 syndrome	Increased in African Americans, most common in men
Plasma gastrin levels	High	High	Normal
Gastric acid output	Low	High	Normal
Number of tumours	Multiple	Multiple	Single
Size of tumors	<1 cm	<1 cm	2–5 cm
Site of tumors	Fundus	Fundus (occasionally antrum)	Fundus or antrum
Metastasis	2–5%	<10%	>50%
Mean age at diagnosis	63	50	55
Prognosis	Good	Usually good—a minority of tumors are more aggressive	Poor