Long term oncological outcome of patients with grossly early gastric cancer-mimicking advanced gastric cancer

Abstract

BackgroundThe survival of grossly early gastric cancer-mimicking advanced gastric cancer (EGC-mimicking AGC) patients had not been investigated. We evaluated the prognosis of patients who were diagnosed as early gastric cancer before surgery and advanced gastric cancer after surgery. MethodsThis retrospective study reviewed 3592 gastric cancer patients who had radical surgery from January 2007 to February 2015. We used a 1:2 propensity score matching method for the analysis. The matching factors were age, sex, body mass index and the depth of cancer invasion. The 5-year overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) of the two study groups were analyzed. ResultsThe 475 grossly EGC-mimicking AGC patients were matched to 910 Borrmann type advanced gastric cancer (AGC) patients. The 5-year OS and DFS of the EGC-mimicking AGC patients were significantly higher than the Borrmann type AGC patients, (89.2% versus 83.4%, p = 0.025; 93.0% versus 85.6%, p < 0.001, respectively). The proportion of patients with lymph node (LN) metastasis was 45.5% in the EGC-mimicking AGC group and 57.1% in the Borrmann type AGC patients (p < 0.001). The ratio of metastatic LNs of N1 and N2 station was 5.2% and 3.1%, respectively, in EGC-mimicking AGC patients; this was lower than in Borrmann type AGC patients (N1: 8.9%, p < 0.001; N2: 3.7%, p = 0.308). ConclusionsPatients with grossly EGC-mimicking AGC had better prognosis than patients with the Borrmann type AGC due to fewer LN metastases. This suggests that limited LN dissection of EGC-mimicking AGC patients may be feasible.