Abstract
From 1971 to 1990, a total of 1523 patients with early gastric cancer underwent gastric resection in our hospital. Of these, 17 patients (1.1%) had microscopic cancer-positive surgical stumps. We conducted clinicopathological and follow-up investigations in these cases. From the standpoint of morphological features 8 of the 17 cases were the superficial spreading type, 4 were multiple cancerous lesions and 2 coexisted with IIb lesions. Cancer-positive stumps of eight cases were under 10mm in width and the others more than 10mm. In 12 cases, cancer cells had invaded the end of the resected stump. In 8 cases cancer cells had spread to the wedge of the superficial layer of the gastric mucosa, in one case of the deep layer, in 8 cases of all layers. As a result of examining the residual stomach, we found residual gastric cancer in 6 cases and re-resected then. Four cases were of the superficial spreading type, cancer-positive stumps of 5 cases were more than 10mm in width, and in 4 cases cancer cell spread to the wedge of all layers.
