Abstract
Objective: We studied the features of gastric cancer discovered at our center and made a comparison of that discovered in screening undergone annually and non-annually.
Methods: Gastric cancer was discovered in 29 of 15,961 persons who underwent gastroscopy at our center in 2014. They were investigated regarding age, sex, lesion location, mural thickening, diameter, morphological type, invasion depth, degree of differentiation and treatment. They were also classified into an annual screening group and a non-annual screening group for comparison.
Results: Regarding background factors for the discovered gastric cancers, they occurred in 24 men and 5 women whose mean age was 62.4±11.2 years (36 - 79 years) and the mean lesion diameter was 22.7±17.2mm (5 - 80 mm). Treatment in 10 of them was endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and the other 19 had surgery. In 21 of them, the cancer was discovered in annual screening and in 8 it was discovered in non-annual screening. The early cancer rate was 95.2% and the mean tumor diameter was 18.2±10.3mm for gastric cancer discovered in annual screening; whereas the early cancer rate and mean tumor diameter were 75.0% and 34.4±24.6mm, respectively, for discovery in non-annual screening. Also, the ESD treatment rates were 38.1% and 25.0%, for discovery in annual and non-annual screening, respectively. Regarding the 21 subjects with gastric cancer in the annual screening group, a comparison with the previous year’s images revealed that there were 8 subjects who had lesions requiring action in the previous year, there were 10 subjects with lesions that did not, and there were 3 subjects with lesions that were not evident in the previous year’s images.
Conclusion: Undergoing endoscopic screening annually would be useful for the early discovery of gastric cancer. Based on annual screening, however, while there were lesions in the previous year’s images that required action, keeping in mind the fact that there are also false negatives, there is a need for highly accurate examination of findings.
