Clinicopathologic characteristics of gastric cancer diagnosed at health screening

Lee, Hyun Jeong; Chung, Jun Mo; Seo, Eun Hee; Jeon, Seong Woo

Abstract

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Stomach cancer is the most common malignancy and one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in Korea. The early diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer are very important because the prognosis of early gastric cancer is excellent. Gastric screening may provide an opportunity to detect asymptomatic early gastric cancer. We analyzed the characteristics of gastric cancer diagnosed with a health screening test to evaluate the usefulness of a screening program for gastric cancer.
METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed the clinicopathological characteristics of 111 gastric cancer patients diagnosed using gastric endoscopy as a gastric screening test at the Health Promotion Center of Kyungpook National University Hospital from July 1997 through December 2005.
RESULTS
The incidence of gastric cancer was 0.38% and the mean patient age was 58.5 years old. The proportion of early gastric cancer was 73% of all gastric cancer. In 55 cases, constituting 49.6% of all gastric cancer and 68% of early gastric cancer, the lesions were confined to the mucosa. The most common macroscopic types were type IIc in early gastric cancer and Borrmann type 3 in advanced gastric cancer. There were significant positive correlations between lymph node metastasis and both the depth of tumor invasion and size of the lesion. The 5-year survival rates are 82.7% in total gastric cancer and 97.2% in early gastric cancer.
CONCLUSIONS
Gastric cancer detected during health screening has a favorable prognosis because gastric cancer confined to the mucosa predominates and early gastric cancer detected at screening has a lower incidence of metastasis to regional lymph nodes.