Gastric Adenocarcinoma.
Adenocarcinoma of the stomach is advanced enough in some patients to preclude curative treatment, but many gastric cancer patients have what appears to be localized disease that is amenable to surgical resection, which is the only truly effective treatment. Long-term results of what appear to be "curative resections" are relatively poor, however, and new management tools such as sentinel lymph node biopsy, recently promising adjunctive therapies (such as radiochemotherapy), and the organization of the order of treatment combinations do require further study with an eye to improving outcomes. However, there appears to be little hope for a dramatic improvement in treatment results from these innovations for patients with established gastric cancer. Fortunately, gastric cancer in the United States has gone from being the number one cause of cancer death in our population 50 years ago to that of being the number eight cause of cancer death at this time. This intriguing major decrease in the incidence of this disease must be considered secondary to one or more changes in our own environment that we hope will be exploitable in the future. As with cancers of all types and in all sites, a prevention strategy may prove more effective than the treatment strategies that are outlined here. The management strategies outlined are hopefully only temporary ones until we are able to develop a better handle on primary prevention.
Department of Surgery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Box 98011, 1200 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23298, USA.
Walter
W
Lawrence