Surgery management for patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor in the era of targeted therapy        YE Ying-jiang, WANG Shan. Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Peking University People’s Hospital, Beijing 100044, China
Corresponding author: WANG Shan, E-mail: shwang60@263.net.
Abstract    Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are the most common mesenchymal tumor of the gastrointestinal tract. For long time, the only proven therapy was surgery. The use of imatinib for targeted therapy has marked a new era in treatment. The surgical management of GIST has rapidly changed in the era of targeted therapy, and gotten advances in surgical principle, surgical technique and time of surgery, based on evidence-based medicine. Multidisciplinary approaches included targeted treatment and surgical treatment are the future to successfully treat patients with GIST. Complete resection without tumor rupture is still gold standard of curative treatment for localized, resectable, primary disease. In advanced patients, imatinib has been the standard treatment. For patients with advanced GIST responsive to imatinib, combined surgical plus targeted therapy may be most effective and improve survival.