Abstract
A group of young patients (aged under 30) with early gastric cancer was compared with other groups divided by age and its characteristics were investigated clinicopathologically.
Our nine patients (ten lesions) accounted for 2.0% of the overall patients with early gastric cancer. The male to female ratio was 3.5:1, which was higher than that in the other age groups. Most patients complained mainly of epigastralgia and the period of suffering was 25 months on average. As for gross types, nine of the ten lesions were of the depressed type. In the total cases of early gastric cancer, many cases of the depressed type were found in the under 50age groups. In the group of 50 years old or more, the number of cases of protruded type gradually increased with age, exceeding the number of cases with depressed type in the 70 or more age groups. As for histologic types. differentiated type was found in three cases and undifferentiated type was found in seven. The number of cases with differentiated type increased with age, amounting to 90% a of the cases over 70 years of age. As for location of the lesion, eight lesions were located at M, and the percentage of the lesions at that location in this group was higher than in any other age group. As for vascular invasion and lymphnode metastasis, there were no large differences as compared with the other age groups. Prognosis was good except for one case in which the patient died of recurrent diseases, and five of nine patients have survived for more than five years.
