Adverse affect of blood transfusions on survival of patients with gastric cancer.

The effect of perioperative blood transfusions on the survival rate of patients with gastric cancer was studied. The survival rate of the transfusion group was significantly lower than that of the nontransfusion group in each of the 5 postoperative years. When no adjuvant immunochemotherapy was performed postoperatively, the prognosis was definitely worse in the transfusion group than in the nontransfusion group. Furthermore, the survival rate of the transfusion group was lower than that of the nontransfusion group in both histopathologic classifications of gastric cancer, and it was lower to a statistically significant extent among the well-differentiated types. These results indicate that transfusions might adversely affect postoperative survival of patients with gastric cancer.