Sir,

We have read the article "gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs): A single institute experience from South India". By Lakshmaiah et al. with interest. [1]

Recently, there has been renewed interest and surge of literature regarding these set of tumors with the introduction of the marker CD117. In a study conducted in our department, we have also encountered stomach as the most common site, followed by small intestine. [2] Majority of the patients belonged to fourth to the fifth decade of life. In our patients, gastrointestinal bleeding was a predominant finding. The GISTs were of high risk category and majority had spindle cell morphology. Similar to the findings by the authors we have observed CD117 positivity in all the tumors categorized as GIST. All of them also showed CD34 positivity in our study group. However, discovered on GIST-1 marker was not done in our study. [2]

The present study provides valuable insight into the therapeutic aspect. A multi-institutional study taking into account various clinicopathological findings is desirable.