Eighty percent of brain metastases (BM) are diagnosed in patients with known primary site of cancer. BM of unknown primary represents a difficult diagnosis. In up to 15 % of patients with BM, the site of the primary tumor will not be detected despite investigations. The prognosis of this entity is very poor. We report here a case of a long survival of a patient with brain metastasis of unknown primary. The conclusion that can be drawn is that within BM of unknown primary exist patients with a very good prognosis that must be collected and published in order to base recommendations.

beta-Human chorionic gonadotropin (beta-HCG) is an embryonic protein secreted by the syncytiotrophoblast of the placenta. The determination of the plasma beta-HCG level is routinely used for the diagnosis and the follow-up of germ cell tumors. Some adenocarcinomas have been described as being rarely associated with beta-HCG hypersecretion. We report a case of gastric signet-ring cell carcinoma with beta-HCG hypersecretion and propose hypotheses to explain the pathogenesis of such hypersecretion.

Although its incidence has declined over last half-century, gastric cancer remains the second most frequent cause of cancer death in the world. The 2/3 of the patients are metastatic at diagnosis. The current study aimed to identify some determinants of survival in patients with metastatic gastric carcinoma. It was a retrospective study that involved 49 patients treated with palliative chemotherapy between January 2000 and December 2010. Factors included: age, gender, performance status, metastatic diagnosis onset (at diagnosis or later); specific metastatic sites, number of metastatic localizations, response to chemotherapy, and hemoglobin rate. In univariate analysis, factors associated to a better survival were: metastasis at diagnosis, good performance status, response to chemotherapy and single metastatic site. Independent factors in multivariate analysis were: metastasis at diagnosis and single metastatic site. Conclusion: our study confirmed many determinants on survival described in the literature.

The Buschke - Lowenstein tumor is a rare sexually transmitted disease. Its location at the anal margin is also very rare. The most incriminated risk factor is human papillomavirus infection. Its clinical form may be confusing with other tumor and infectious lesions. Histologically, it is characterized by a well-differentiated malpighian proliferation. It represents local aggressive behavior. The treatment of reference remains the surgery with healthy margins of excision. Other treatments have been tested, but their effectiveness remains uncertain. We report here a new case of anal margin Buschke - Lowenstein tumor with a review of the literature.