Individual Prognostic Factors in Gastric Cancer

Objectives: The objective of this research was to study the prognostic factors in gastric cancer.
Methods: We conducted a retrospective study on 5-year survival in 112 patients with gastric adenocarcinoma operated between 2004-2009. We used the Surgery Clinic I and Health Insurance House databases for study of the following parameters: age, sex, depth of invasion, histological type, surgery, number of lymph nodes excised and reported overrun / removed lymphnodes.
Results: There was no significant survival difference related to gender aspects. We found significant differences in the survival rate in relation to the tumours confined to the mucosa and muscularis mucosae (100% and 60% respectively), compared to the cases with deeper invasion (p<0.05). Intestinal type presented a superior however insignificant prognosis compared to diffuse type (22% versus 5.66%). Five years survival was slightly lower after D1 lymphadenectomy D1 compared to D2 lymphadenectomy (25.92% versus 29.16%). We found large differences among the number of perigastric lymph nodes (between 3 and 42 in groups of 1 to 6) nodules. Survival rates were significantly higher (p <0.05) in patients with overrun lymphnodes between 0 and <20%, compared to those with overrun ones over 20% of all excised nodes (23.07%, 55.55% vs. 3.89%).
Conclusions: Merely the number of removed lymph nodes may be a source of error in staging if not taken into account the groups they belong to; the most constant individual prognostic factors are the depth of invasion and overrun/removed lymph nodes report; D2 lymphadenectomy has superior results in terms of 5 years survival compared to D1 lymphadenectomy, but, at least in our study, the difference was insignificant.