An assessment of local curability of endoscopic surgery in early gastric cancer without satisfaction of current therapeutic indications.

BACKGROUND AND STUDY AIMS

Therapeutic endoscopy for early gastric cancer has been established with strict criteria for indications. In the present study, we evaluated the efficacy of endoscopic treatment in cases that did not fulfil the standard therapeutic criteria, consisting of well differentiating mucosal adenocarcinomas less than 2 cm in size and without an ulcer or a scar.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Sixty nine early gastric cancers in 64 patients that did not fulfil the standard criteria were treated endoscopically, and a rate of cure was retrospectively assessed during a mean follow-up of 5.2 years. Endoscopic treatment consisted of mucosal resection or thermal methods, or both.

RESULTS

Curative resection was achieved in 19/20 (95%) of cases which came into one of the following categories, all being well differentiated adenocarcinomas, less than 3.0 cm in size, without ulcer or the scar of an ulcer, with invasion limited to mucosal layer (depth m); tumors less than 2.0 cm, with an ulcer or scar, depth m; tumors less than 2.0 cm, without ulcer or scar, invading the submucosa but in which invasion was limited to the superficial portion (depth sm-1); and poorly differentiated tumors less than 1.0 cm in size, without an ulcer or scar, depth m. The rate of cure in this group was statistically similar to the cure rate of cases that fulfilled the standard criteria (98%).

CONCLUSIONS

Our retrospective results suggest that the indications for curative treatment of early gastric cancer could be expanded. Prospective studies are required.