Gastric resections had been performed in 682 patients with early gastric cancer at department of surgery, Severance Hospital duriny past 7 years from January, 1987 to December, 1993.
Synchronous multiple gastric cancer, according to the diagnostic criteria of Moertel, was found in 38(5.6%) with 37 double and 1 triple lesions and male to female ratio was 4.4 to 1 with average age of 57year.
Only 44.7% of the multiple lesions were diagnosed preoperatively and 71.0% of the smaller lesions were less than 10 mm in diameter.
In 50% of the patients, the main lesions were in the middle one-third of the stomach and smaller lesions were in the lower one-third. The correspondence of the multiple lesions was 68%. The clinical significance of the smaller lesions was their location relative to the resection line.
When planning treatment of early gastric cancer, it is important to evaluate the whole stomach before and during the operation and after examining the resected specimen.
The survival rate for patients with multiple early gastric cancer was excellent as that of overall early gastric cancer.