Abstract
We defined cases of gastric cancer detected in patients annually undergoing screening as false negative and evaluated them by the following points: clinic-pathological findings, causes of false negative cases, years of gastroendoscopic experience of physicians, sites of lesions and false negative rates. All cases were in the early stage and 9 of these cases (52.9%) were completely treated by endoscopy. Eleven cases (64.7%) could have been detected by technical improvement of the endoscopist and more careful double check. Although the number of gastroendoscopies per year in our hospital is 3000, the false negative rate was 31.5% when all cases of gastric cancer detected in patients annually undergoing screening were defined as false negative. But when false negative cases were defined as those in which the lesions could be confirmed by the review of images in the previous year, the false negative rate was 14.8%. This result was almost the same as those of the so-called high volume centers. Therefore, it is possible to maintain high quality mass screening by endoscopy even in local cities by performing proper quality control.
