Clinical features of gastric cancer discovered after successful eradication of Helicobacter pylori: results from a 9‐year prospective follow‐up study in Japan

Abstract

Eradication of Helicobacter pylori is expected to prevent the development of gastric cancer. However, gastric cancer is sometimes discovered after successful eradication of H. pylori. To conduct a prospective study to determine the clinical features of patients who underwent successful eradication and were later diagnosed with gastric cancer. A total of 1787 patients (1299 males and 488 females; mean age, 58.2 years; range: 15-84) who underwent successful eradication therapy between April 1994 and March 2001 were our study subjects. Gastric cancer occurred at a rate of 1.1% (20 of 1787) during the follow-up period. Gastric cancer comprises six of 105 (5.7%) with early gastric cancer after endoscopic resection, 12 of 575 (2.1%) with gastric ulcer and two of 453 (0.4%) with atrophic gastritis. Gastric cancer did not develop in any patient with duodenal ulcer. All patients with gastric cancer had baseline severe atrophic gastritis in the corpus. Careful endoscopic examination is necessary even after successful eradication of H. pylori in patients with early gastric cancer or gastric ulcer with severe mucosal atrophy in the corpus.