Gastric varices formation due to pancreatic tumor: a case of successful resection of cystadenocarcinoma.

We report a 70-year-old woman with gastric varices due to splenic vein obstruction by a cystadenocarcinoma of the caudal pancreas. Most of the pancreatic cancer had already extensively progressed and was unresectable when an obstruction of the splenic vein was also discovered. Two contributing factors are thought to have enabled us to perform a curative resection in this case: (1) the gastric varices were detected by chance in a mass survey, (2) the cancer was not so advanced as to be unresectable.