Lymphadenectomy is unnecessary for patients with small intramucosal EGC with neither histologic ulceration of the tumor nor lymphatic vessel invasion because the incidence of regional lymph node metastasis is extremely low in those patients. The therapeutic options for such patients would be local resection or endoscopic resection.

MCC-465 was well tolerated. The recommended dose for a phase II study of MCC-465, for a 3-week schedule, is considered to be 32.5 mg/m2 in an equivalent amount of DXR.

No abstract

The recommended dose and schedule is CPT-11 70 mg/m2 on days 1 and 15 and cisplatin 80 mg/m2 on day 1 every 4 weeks. This combination of CPT-11 and cisplatin, considered to be active against advanced gastric cancer with acceptable toxicity, should be further assessed in a phase II study.

The measurement of tumor markers might be useful in monitoring response and in predicting the prognosis of patients with advanced gastric cancer treated with systemic chemotherapy. Tumor markers may be used as a means of monitoring treatment in patients when in an imaging study it is difficult to assess response to chemotherapy in clinical practice. Further studies are required to confirm these findings.