Postoperative follow-up of early gastric cancer in the elderly patients / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the clinicopathological characteristics of early gastric carcinoma for prognosis and the long term consequences of gastrectomy for quality of life in the aged. Methods The clinicopathological features and late postoperative complications by follow up study for 71 patients during 1973 1999 with early gastric cancer were reviewed by using hospital records. Results Forty six cases(64.8%) were diagnosed by routine gastroscopic checkup. 56 cases out of 71 (74.6%) were mucosal cancer without lymph node metastasis, 18 cases were submucosal cancer with lymph node metastasis in 2 cases. By histological study, we found that 32 lesions (45.1%) were located at the antrum, differentiated tubular adenocarcinoma was found in 43 cases, and multiple primary carcinoma in 5 cases and gastric stump cancer in 3 cases. The disorders of gastric stump included anastomotic gastritis, empting disturbance, erosion, ulcer, reflux esophagitis were found in 31, 7, 6, 4 and 3 cases, respectively. Fourteen patients showed weight loss and 9 showed anemia. Patients with proximal gastrectomy suffered more from disoders than the patients with distal gastrectomy. Conclusions Our results suggest that special attention should be given to the patients with chronic atrophic gastritis diagnosed by routine gastroscopy. Lymph node metastasis, multiple primary cancer and gastric stump cancer might affect the prognosis. Our results support the fact that the incidence of disorders of gastric stump are high; and the surgical treatment with gastroscopic procedure is recommended for the mucosal cancer in order to improve the patients' quality of life.