1993 Volume 30 Issue 5 Pages 376-381
The first choice for the treatment of gastric cancer is surgery. Presently, endoscopic therapy offers the possibility of cure for some types of early gastric cancer, especially among aged or poor surgical risk patients and has obtained excellent results. During the past 13 years and 6 months from April 1978 to September 1991, 55 lesions in 52 patients aged over 75 years old were treated by endoscopic therapy. During this same period, 57 patients aged over 75 years old were surgically treated for early gastric cancer. In this study we evaluated the efficacy of endoscopic therapy for the treatment of early gastric cancer, and furthermore we compared endoscopic therapy with surgery in relation to prognosis, complications and quality of life. The analysis of endoscopic treatment showed that in 72.7% of our cases local cure was obtained. Generally, early gastric cancers less than 20mm, of well differentiated type, restricted to the mucosa and without ulceration are suitable for endoscopic therapy. Local cure could be achieved in more than 90% of these cases. Among the 52 patients treated by endoscopic therapy, there were residual lesions after treatment in in 4 patients. They died of advanced disease or metastatic liver tumor. These patients were poor surgical risks and for this reason surgery was contraindicated. Analysis by the Kaplan-Meier method showed that in comparison with conventional surgery, endoscopic therapy showed better results in the first two years of follow up and almost the same results after three years. Our study therefore suggests that for the treatment of early gastric cancer in patients aged over 75, endoscopic therapy should be considered as the first method of choice.
