Linitis plastica of the stomach
My Dad has recently been diagnosed with linitis plastica and he seems very ill. What is this condition and how is it treated? How long will he live?
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Gastric linitis plastica is the medical term for a rare type of stomach (gastric) cancer. It is a type of stomach adenocarcinoma. Adenocarcioma is the most common form of stomach cancer. Because linitus plastica is rare there is very little information about it. Linitus plastica spreads to the muscles of the stomach wall and makes it thicker and more rigid. This means that the stomach can’t hold as much and doesn’t stretch or move as it should when food is digested. This ‘stiff walled’ stomach is sometimes called a ‘leather bottle stomach’.
Treatment for gastric linitis plastica is similar to that for other types of stomach cancers. Your Dad’s doctor may suggest that they remove his stomach with an operation called a total gastrectomy. But this is not always successful as this type of cancer is very fast growing. It may have become too big and bulky to remove it all during surgery. Or it might have spread beyond the stomach wall and be hard to remove completely.
The cancer may also have spread to other parts of your Dad’s body such as the lymph nodes or the lining of the abdominal organs and it’s cavity (peritoneum). If this were the case, your Dad would probably only have surgery to help relieve symptoms, for example those caused by a blockage.
Deciding whether or not to have surgery to relieve symptoms can be very difficult. These operations are long and complex and you need to weigh up whether or not the benefits from the operation will be greater than the drawbacks. There is more information about having surgery to relieve symptoms in the stomach cancer section.
If surgery isn’t an option for your Dad, then chemotherapy may be possible, depending on whether he is well enough to go through chemotherapy treatment, and his own personal wishes. The aim of chemotherapy treatment is to slow down the growth of the cancer and to relieve symptoms. There is information on chemotherapy for stomach cancer in the stomach cancer section of CancerHelp UK. You may also find it useful to read our section on living with stomach cancer.
It is very natural for you to want to know how long your father has left to live. This is one of the hardest questions to answer, because several factors will affect your Dad’s condition and outcome. For example, his general health and how well he responds to treatment. Remember also that the same type of cancer can behave differently in different people and this will affect their prognosis.
Prognosis means the likely outcome of a person’s disease and treatment. In other words, their chances of getting better and how long they are likely to live. When a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, people often use statistics to try to work out what may happen in the future. But statistics are based on large numbers of people and so can’t show what will happen to any individual person. Statistics also don’t take into account the type of stomach cancer that a person is diagnosed with, or the stage of the cancer. By stage we mean the size of the cancer and whether it has spread.
Generally, linitis plastica is a very difficult type of cancer to treat. It is possible that your Dad has discussed his prognosis with his doctor. It might be that he doesn’t want to talk about his cancer and what the doctors have told him. But on the other hand he may find it difficult to broach the subject and would actually find it supportive to talk things through with you. Or he may even want you to talk to the doctors with him or for him. It depends very much on your own family situation as to how you approach this. In any situation your Dad’s doctors are the best people to give more specific information about his prognosis. But he is the patient and you must have his permission before the doctors will be able to discuss his illness with you in detail.
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