Early gastric cancer ; Recurrence ; Risk factor ; Survival
Abstract
Background/Aims: The incidence of early gastric cancer(EGC) has increased steadily and it has reached over 20% in Korean gastric cancer patients. The majority of early gastric cancer is curable by surgical treatment but there is a small percentage of recurrent patients ranging between 0.5-4.2%, We performed this study to clarify the incidence and risk factors involved in the recurrence of the EGC treated by curative surgical resection. Methods: We reviewed follow up records of 509 patients of EGC who underwent curative resection at the Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College of Medicine from January 1987 to December l992 for cancer recurrence. We investigated the relationships among clinicopathologic characteristics, recurrence pattern and duration of survival in recurrent cases. Results: The mean age of the patients studied was 56 years with 1.2:1 male to fernale ratio. The most common macroscopic type of EGC in recurrent cases was type Iic. The recurrence rate was 1.5%. Higher recurrence rates were noted in node-positive cases(2.6%) and histologically differentiated carcinomas(2.0%) than in node- negative(1.4%) and undifferentiated carcinoma(1.3%). The major mode of recurrence was hematogenous metastasis. The rnean time interval to recurrence was 46.2 months and the mean overall survival period of expired cases was 41.6 months. Conclusions: The abso)ute number of EGC recurrence was too small to assess the risk factor in this series and further multi-institute cumulative study is needed.