Background: The aims of this study were to identify prognostic factors of patients with submucosa-invasive (T1b) gastric cancer and to verify the validity of adjuvant chemotherapy for this disease.
Methods: We retrospectively examined the cases of 1,236 consecutive patients in our prospectively maintained database with T1b gastric cancer who underwent gastrectomy in 1995-2012. We used 11 clinicopathologic characteristics to identify prognostic factors by univariate and multivariate analyses. We compared the survival of the 160 node-positive T1b gastric cancer patients with that of 133 patients in the same database who had node-positive muscularis propria-invasive (T2) gastric cancer and had undergone gastrectomy without adjuvant chemotherapy during the same period, as a reference cohort.
Results: The 5-year overall survival rate was 91.4% for all 1,236 patients. Advanced age (hazard ratio [HR] 4.51; 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.26-6.24; P < .01), male sex (HR 2.26; 95% CI 1.56-3.26; P < .01), and the presence of lymph node metastasis (HR 1.89; 95% CI 1.33-2.70; P < .01) were independent prognostic factors. The 5-year overall survival rates were 92.5% in node-negative patients, 84.5% in patients with 1 or 2 metastatic nodes, and 80.1% in patients with 3 or more metastatic nodes (P < .01). The 5-year overall survival rates of the node-positive T1b and T2 gastric cancer patients were 83.6% and 81.2%, respectively (P = .73).
Conclusion: The prognosis of node-positive T1b gastric cancer patients after curative gastrectomy was unsatisfactory. Adjuvant chemotherapy should be considered for these patients, especially those with 3 or more metastatic nodes.
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