ObjectiveTo investigate the clinicopathologic and epidemiological characteristics of patients with gastric cancer at our hospital in the past six years． Methods A total of 958 patients with gastric cancer were selected from January 2004 to December 2009 and clinicopathologic characteristics such as basic data, pathological type, tumor location, and TNM stage were retrospectively analyzed. ResultsOf the 958 patients，697 cases (72.8%) were male and 261 cases (27.2%) were female, and the age ranged from 26 to 91 years old (mean 62.6 years old). The occurrence rate of gastric cancer was higher in the patients of 46-65 years old (49.4%, 473/958) than that in the patients of ≥66 years old (42.3%, 405/958) and ≤45 years old (8.3%, 80/958). Regarding pathologic type, the majority of advanced gastric cancers (70.1%) were Borrmann Ⅱ, the adenocarcinoma and signetring cell carcinoma accounted for 82.3% and 7.8%, respectively. The cancer of gastric cardia accounted for 53.0%. Stagestratified analysis revealed that the majority of gastric cancers (47.4%) were stage Ⅲ. Conclusion①A prevalence of gastric cancer is found in middle, elderly male patients. Poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma in cardia is prominent. ②Patients with high malignant ganstrie cancer are younger. ③The majority of patients who underwent the surgical treatments have advanced or metastatic tumor, therefore it is necessary to improve the early diagnosis of gastric cancer.
Objective To identify micrometastasis in regional lymph nodes of gastric cancer by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) assay and to evaluate the clinical significance of micrometastasis. Methods To study 320 lymph nodes collected from January 2010 to June 2010， 281 of which were from 40 patients with gastric cancer who had undergone a standard gastrectomy with lymphadenectomy， and other 39 of which were from 10 patients with gastroduodenal ulcer. Made CEA， CK-19， and CK-20 as primers， and used qRT-PCR assay in addition to hematoxylin and eosin staining to detect the micrometastasis， and to analyze the clinicopathologic characteristics.Results Totally， micrometastasis were detected by qRT-PCR assay in 31 (15.34%，31/202) lymph nodes of 28 (70.00%， 28/40) patients. Thirty-nine lymph nodes from 10 patients with gastroduodenal ulcer were negative by qRT-PCR and HE staining. The degree of differentiation， depth of gastric mural invasion， and clinical stage had statistically significant correlation with the incidence of lymph node micrometastasis (P＜0.05). Conclusions qRT-PCR assay is a sensitive and specific method to detect lymph node micrometastasis in gastric cancer patients，and it has importantly clinical significance in evaluating clinical staging，prognosis and treatment prescription.