[Metastasis in the palatine tonsil as the first sign of a gastric adenocarcinoma].

Gastric adenocarcinomas rarely give rise to metastases in the palatine tonsils; twelve such cases have been published. In two of them the tonsillar tumour was the first sign of the disease. We present a patient with a tumour of the palatine tonsil and cervical lymph node involvement who was diagnosed as having an adenocarcinoma of "signet ring" cells in the histopathology and cytology studies. Finding such cells directed us to the stomach in our search for the primary.