Gastric Cancer Screening

Abstract

Gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, and East Asian countries including Korea, Japan, and China have a higher incidence of gastric cancer. Although there was no randomized controlled study for effectiveness of gastric cancer screening, Korea and Japan have provided government-supported national screening programs for gastric cancer. Several case-control studies and recent cohort studies have reported the effectiveness of radiographic screening for gastric cancer in Japan. Japanese guidelines for gastric cancer screening recommend that radiographic screening was the only effective method because of a lack of studies using endoscopic screening. From analysis of Korean national cancer screening data, endoscopy was more effective than radiography for gastric cancer screening because the accuracy of endoscopy is much higher than that of radiography. The Korean National Cancer Screening Program has recommended either endoscopy or radiography screening for gastric cancer, but the 2015 updated Korean guideline recommends only endoscopy for national cancer screening program. In this chapter, the accuracy and effectiveness of gastric cancer screening by screening modalities and gastric cancer screening guidelines of Korea and Japan will be discussed.