Clinicopathological features of gastric cancer in young patients

Abstract

Background Early-onset gastric cancer is relatively rare. To evaluate the clinicopathological features and surgical outcome of young patients with gastric cancer, this retrospective comparative study was conducted. Methods From 2000 to 2010, 4882 patients underwent surgery for gastric adenocarcinoma in our institution. A total of 136 patients under 40 years old were enrolled as the young group, and a total of 1435 patients aged between 60 and 69 were identified as the control group for this study. The patient's characteristics, pathological findings, surgical and clinical outcomes were reviewed, and the risk factors of recurrence were compared between the two groups. Results Among the young group, patients had significantly fewer comorbidities and postoperative complications. The patient proportion having 7 or more lymph node metastases was higher in the young group (25 %) than in the control group (16 %). The presence of lymph node metastasis was identified as a strong risk factor for recurrence (odds ratio = 4.31) in the young group according to the results of the step-wise logistic regression analysis. Although the disease-specific survival at stage II was relatively better in the young group (p = 0.0439) than in the control group, there were no significant differences in overall survival for all stages. Conclusion Early-onset gastric cancer is likely to present lymph node metastases. The survival rate of gastric cancer in young patients was equivalent to that in patients in their 60s, which is the typical age at onset.

2296 Clinical characteristics of young age onset gastric cancer in Korea

“…About half of the patients were diagnosed as SRC, and there were slight female predominance. Previous studies have reported young age GC shows slight female predominance or similar prevalence between both sexes, with higher rate of poorly differentiated carcinoma or SRC by pathologic review [4,5,14]. Previously mentioned clinical characteristics were in concordance to studies mentioned above.…”

“…In Western studies, the prevalence of AGCa is by far higher than EGCa [6,10]. Compared to Western, the prevalence of AGCa and EGCa were similar in Asian studies [4,5,14], alike to our analysis. This discrepancy may be due to different screening program between Western and Asia.…”

“…The incidence of young age GC ranges from 2-15 % [6][7][8][9], with controversial results about prognosis. Previous studies have reported poor prognosis of young age GC patients compared to general population [10,11], but other studies report equivalent or better prognosis between young and elderly GC patients [5,12]. The clinical characteristics of young age GC is analyzed based on a heterogeneous patient population with regard to races and different definitions of young age population, resulting to various results.…”

“…Mean age of GC in Korea and Japan is over 50 years of age [3], but there are some proportions of patients who are diagnosed as GC in young age. The definition of young age GC remains controversial, but mainly other literatures defined young age below 40 years of age [4,5].…”

Impact of Age on the Prognosis of Operable Gastric Cancer Patients

“…It mainly occurred in older population, with a peak reported incidence for patients from 50 to 70 years. [5] However, the rate of GC in young patients has increased over the past few decades, despite a reduction in the overall prevalence of the disease. [6] Age at diagnosis, a key variable, not only was used as an indispensable adjusted element in the observational studies, but also contained inestimable value for prognosis.…”