Two case reports of esophageal schwannoma and literature review of case reports

We report two cases of esophageal schwannoma. A 66-year-old woman (case 1) and a 56-year-old man (case 2) were admitted for abnormal shadows pointed out in barium esophagography. In case 1, an esophageal sub-mucosal tumor was resected by transthoracic esophagectomy with gastric tube reconstruction. In case 2, esophageal tumor was enucleated by thoracoscopic surgery. To remove the tumor from the muscular layer, a Sangstaken-Blakemore tube (S-B tube) was used intraoperatively inserted into the esophagus preoperatively. Both tumors consisted histopathologically of spindle-shaped cell bundles and S-100 protein expression was im-munohistochemically confirmed in both tumors. The definitive diagnose was benign esophageal schwannoma in both cases. Esophageal schwannoma is extremely rare, and we review 26 cases from the Japanese literature.