Abstract

The prognosis of early gastric cancer (EGC) is generally excellent, and the proportion of EGC cases to advanced gastric cancer cases is steadily increasing nowadays. The presence or absence of lymph node metastasis in EGC is important prognostic factor, in other words, the survival rate or recurrence rate of node negative EGC is known to be much better than that of node positive ones. Retrospective analysis was performed for 682 EGC cases which underwent more than D2 resection in Yonsei medical center between 1986 Jan. to 1993 Dec, in order to investigate the clinicopathological factors to predict the possibility of lymph node metastasis. In this study, several factors such as age, sex, tumor location, tumor size, multiplicity, depth of invasion, macroscopic and histologic type were evaluated to determine the significance. In the analysis of these eight factors, sex, tumor size, depth of invasion and macroscopic type were statistically correlated with lymph node metastasis. We consider these factors to be possible high risk factors for lymph node metastasis in early gastric cancer.

• Keywords: Early gastric cancer, Lymph node metastasis, High risk factors