Mucosectomy for gastric cancer: Current status in Japan

Advances in techniques of image diagnosis have enabled the detection of min ute or small cancer lesions in the stomach. Patients with such cancer, in p rinciple, were treated surgically, but accumulated histopathological data o n surgical cancer specimens revealed that many of these patients did not ha ve any metastatic lesions. For those localized cancers, local treatment of primary lesions by endoscopy gives curative results. It has been demonstrat ed that endoscopic therapy is curative in mucosal well-differentiated adeno carcinoma not more than 20 mm in diameter without ulceration. Efforts to cu re early gastric cancer without surgery yielded fruitful results and a new treatment concept was established. Even if there is a recurrence of the res idual or metachronous lesions, they can be treated by further endoscopic tr eatment. (C) 2000 Blackwell Science Asia Pty Ltd.