title: Prognostic impact of risk factors in patients with gastric cancer in Iran.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Gastric cancer (GC) is one the most common causes of death worldwide. Despite the decreasing rate of GC in the world through recent years, it is still the most common cancer in men and the fourth in the general population in Iran. This study aimed to assess the survival of patients with GC and to determine prognostic factors.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 471 patients with GC were followed from 21 March 2003 to 21 March 2007 in the Cancer Institute of Imam Khomeini Hospital. The patients' survival rate was determined by periodical refers. The survival period considered as the time from diagnosis up to death or the end of the study. The effects of gender, age at diagnosis, tumor site, pathologic stage of disease, type of treatment used, and metastasis were evaluated by log-rank test in a univariate analysis. In addition, all the variables were evaluated simultaneously by the Cox proportional hazard (PH) model. Data were analyzed using SPSS 16 software.
  
  
  RESULTS
  357 (75.8%) out of 471 patients were male and 153 cases (32.5%) experienced death. The mean and median ages at diagnosis were 58.5 and 60.7 years respectively. Also, the survival mean and median were 41.8 ( 3.1) and 27 (1.7) months respectively. Gender, type of treatment, pathologic stage, the degree of differentiation were significantly related to survival.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There was a potential effective role of age at diagnosis, gender of patients and pathologic stage of disease in cancer therapy in this part of Iran. Therefore, to reduce the risk of death in patients with GC, early diagnosis of patients at a younger age and also in primary stages must be targeted.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Faculty of Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran.
authors.forename: Ghodratollah
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Roshanaei
authors.forename: Masoud Sabouri
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Ghannad
authors.forename: Mohammad Asghari
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Jafarabadi
authors.forename: Javad
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Faradmal
authors.forename: Sanambar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sadighi
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D012307:Risk Factors; D012737:Sex Factors; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality* / Q000473:pathology; D015996:Survival Rate