Evaluation of mass screening program for stomach cancer.

Particular method and program of mass survey examination of gastric cancer were introduced into Miyagi Prefecture and the results accumulated during the past 14 years are presented. During this period, 1,427 cases of gastric cancer (0.18%), as well as many cases of other diseases of the stomach and duodenum, were found by the mass survey. 450 cases were those of early cancer in which invasion of carcinoma was limited to the mucosa and submucosa. The ratio of surgically confirmed early cancer cases to all the stomach cancer cases was 36.4%. Almost in all cases of early stomach cancer there were neither complaints nor clinical symptoms; that is, they were the cases of so-called preclinical cancer of the stomach. The prognosis after surgery of early stomach cancer was remarkably favorable with a five-year survival rate over 90% and the death rate due to stomach cancer was actually decreased in the surveyed population.