Surgery for stage IV gastric cancer: An Italian perspective.

Abstract

403 Background: Surgical approach to gastric cancer with hepatic metastases is becoming more and more accepted but few information exist concerning the surgical management of gastric cancer with extra-hepatic metastases. With this retrospective study we evaluated if the prognosis is influenced by different metastatic sites and we looked for the presence of prognostic factors. Methods: We analysed 282 patients with gastric cancer and synchronous metastases treated at our Institutions from 2010 to January 2017. We investigated survival performances after surgery according to the site of metastases: peritoneal, haematogenous, hepatic, distant lymph nodes and more than one site. Furthermore, we investigated how survival was influenced by patient-, gastric cancer-, metastases- and treatment-related prognostic factors. Results: Median overall survival was 10.9 months. We found no survival differences according to the site of metastases: median survival was 11.2, 11.6, 9.8, 21.4, 7.0 months for peritoneal, hepatic, lymph-nodal, haematogenous and more than1 site of metastases, respectively (p = 0.797). In all subgroups we observed an interesting number of long-term survivors (peritoneal 14.3% ≥36 months, 7.6% ≥60 months; hepatic 13.0% ≥36 months, 2.2% ≥60 months; lymph nodes 12.5% ≥36 months, 3.1% ≥60 months; > 1 site 18.7% ≥36 months, 1.6% ≥60 months). At multivariate analysis the factors that influenced survival were: number of resected lymph-nodes (p = 0.013), extension of lymphadenectomy (p < 0.001), pN (p = 0.003), curativity (p = 0.032) and histology (p = 0.028). Conclusions: We showed that no differences in overall survival according to site of metastases exist and we suggest that patients in whom a curative resection is possible, should be treated by resection of both gastric cancer and metastases.