[Progress of the treatment of gastric cancer in Cancer Institute Hospital, Tokyo].

From 1946 to 1990, a total of 10,485 cases of gastric cancer patients were treated at the Cancer Institute Hospital (CIH), Tokyo. During the past 46 years, CIH contributed to various aspects of surgical treatment of gastric cancer; extensive radical surgery for advanced cancer, safe reconstruction methods after total gastrectomy, modified surgery for early stage cancer, and multimodality therapy for moderately advanced cancer. Five-year survival rate was 20% for all cases in 1940s, and 66.5% for 1980s. Improvement in the treatment results could be attributed to the relative increase in the number of early stage cancers, the increase in the rate of curative surgery (R0), and incorporation of multi-modality therapy before or after curative surgery. Stage-oriented therapy is mandatory for further improvement in the treatment results and the patient's quality of life after surgery.