A clinicopathological study in young patients with gastric carcinoma

Background and Objectives: Gastric carcinoma rarely affects young patients. This study was undertaken in order to clarify the clinicopathological feat ures and prognosis of young patients with gastric carcinoma. Methods: The resected 107 specimens from 105 patients younger than 30 years of age with gastric carcinoma were investigated using hematoxylin and eosi n stain. Results: The male:female ratio was 1:1.6. Histologically, poorly differenti ated adenocarcinoma was the most common type (94/107, 87.9%) (P < 0.001). M ost tumors were located in the middle third of the stomach (P < 0.001). All patients had depressed lesions. The 5-year survival rates of early and adv anced gastric carcinoma were 100% (30/30) and 23.5% (8/34), respectively. Conclusions: Characteristic clinicopathological features in young patients, such as gender ratio, tumor location, macroscopic type, and histological t ype, were different from those in older ones. The prognosis of early gastri c carcinoma in young patients was much better than that in older patients, although the prognosis of advanced gastric carcinoma in young patients was worse than that of older patients. These findings seem to indicate that you ng patients with early gastric carcinoma can tolerate radical treatments we ll; however, the aggressiveness of lesions are emphasized in patients with advanced gastric carcinoma. J. Surg. Oncol. 1999;71:214-219. (C) 1999 Wiley -Liss, Inc.