There has been debate of the New UICC classification(1987) of the stage of gastric cancer, although it has been proposed to avoid many of contradictions involved in the Old UICC classification. For instance, T1N1M0, which has been classified as
the
stage Ⅲin the Old UICC classification, is classified as the stage Ib in the New UICC clssification despite in the presence of lymph node metastasis.
To evaluate the adequacy of the the New UICC classification, we analyzed survival rates of 1257 gastric cancer patients treated by radical subtotal or total gastrectomy in our hospital during the period of January 1980 through December 1989. For
comparison, the Old UICC classification was also applied. The 5-year survival rate was studied according to the Old and New UICC classifications and to the status of lymph node metastasis using the life-table method.
Both the Old and New UICC classifications appeared to be inadequate for TNM staging, and thus a modified classification was employed. According to this classification, the 5-year survival rate of stageⅠ,Ⅱa,Ⅱb,Ⅲa,Ⅲb was 94.2%, 80.5%, 52.6%,
41.2%
and 20.6%, respectively. The 5-year survival rate of N0, N1, N2 group was 79.0% and 25.4% respectively.
On the basis of this analysis, we propose that it is more reasonable to classify T1N0M0 as the stage I, T1N1M0 and T2N0M0 as the stage Ⅱa, T1N2M0, T2N0M0 T3N0M0as the stage Ⅱb, T2N0M0 as the stageⅡb, T2N2M0 and T3N1M0 as the stageⅢa, and
T3N2M0
as
the stageⅢb.
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