Gastric cancer survival in Sweden. Lack of improvement in 19 years.

A total of 34,549 patients constituting 87.0% of all patients with gastric cancer diagnosed in Sweden in 1960-1978 and reported to the National Cancer Registry were included in a complete follow-up over a period of 1-20 years. The poor outcome in this disease was again established in this unselected material. Thus, the 5-year relative survival rate (with 95% confidence limits) was 12.7% (12.1-13.2%) among the men and 14.1% (13.4-14.9%) among the women, without any long-term difference between the sexes. The annual hazard rates in male and female patients were still 11.0% (8.3-13.7%) and 9.0% (7.1-10.9%), respectively, after 5 years and did not approach zero until 10 years after the diagnosis. Men older than 75 showed a slightly higher mortality during the first year, but there were seemingly no relationships of tumor-biological or clinical significance between age at diagnosis and long-term relative survival. The overall prognosis remained unchanged during the 19 years of the study, whereas the incidence was reduced by about 40% in the whole Swedish population.