[Peritoneal lavage diagnosis with TRC (transcription reverse transcription concerted reaction) system for prediction of peritoneal recurrence in gastric cancer].

Peritoneal dissemination is the most frequent recurrent type in advanced gastric cancer. Therefore, the early detection or prediction of peritoneal dissemination is important for the management of patients with advanced gastric cancer. Cytological examination with peritoneal lavage fluids obtained at surgery is widely used for the detection of peritoneal dissemination in gastric cancer. However, the sensitivity of the conventional method is not enough for the prediction of peritoneal recurrence. Recently, molecular diagnosis for detection of cancer cells has been widely studied as the sensitive method for detection of cancer micrometastasis in patients with malignancies including gastric cancer. In this study, novel genetic diagnosis with TRC (transcription reverse transcription concerted reaction) system for detection of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) mRNA (Tosoh corporation, Tokyo, Japan) has been introduced for peritoneal lavage diagnosis. We assessed the sensitivity and reproducibility of the test using the diluted gastric cancer cells. Furthermore, the results of TRC with peritoneal lavage fluids obtained from gastric cancer patients has been compared with results of conventional cytology and RT-PCR (reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction).