Clinical Evoluation of DNA Ploidy Content in Early Gastric Cancer with Recurrence

Abstract

The nuclear DNA content was microspectrophotometrically measured in 54 early gastric cancinomas, 13 with tumor recurrence and 41 without them, to determine if there is a predominance of a particular DNA ploidy pattern in early gastric cancer with tumor recurrence among cases with the same depth of invasion, macroscopic type, histological type and lymph node metastasis. DNA distribution patterns were grouped into low and high ploidies. The incidence of high ploidy was 54% in early gastric cancers with recurrence and tended to be higher than in the cases without recurrence. Recurrence of early gastric cancer has been reported to be frequent in patients with submucosal invasion, mixed type, differentiated adenocarcinoma and lymph node metastasis. The incidence of high ploidy was higher in eraly gastric cancers with tumor recurrence than in cases without them among cases of the same clinicopathological stages mentioned above. These findings suggest the clinical value of DNA analysis for prediction of tumor recurrence in patients with early gastric carcinoma. Patients with cancers with high ploidy should be treated with intensive therapeutic regimens directed against tumor recurrence, even if they have received curative resection of early gastric cancer. Furthermore, mucosal cancers with low ploidy should be treated by a limited operation.