The present study was undertaken to investigate the possible prognostic significance of lymphatic-vassel invasion(LVI) for survival and the correlation of LVI with other standard prognostic variables in a retrospective series of 722 gastric
adenocarcinoma patients who underwent resection from 1983 to 1991 at Korea University Hospital, Seoul, Korea.
The Chi-Square trst was used to determine the statistical significance of differences, and the Kaplan-meier method was used to calculate survival rate. We assessed using the log-rank test.
Ninety-one patients(12.6%) were identified as having tumor with LVI. The 5-year-survival rate was significantly lower(p<0.01) in patients with LVI(LVI+)(39.0%) than in patients without LVI(LVI-)(62.5%). Comparison of LVI with other
clinicopathologic
features showed no significant differenes in age, sex, and tumor location. The incidence of LVI increased with icreasing tumor size, and from stage I(0%) to stage IV(24.1%). The incidence of LVI was significantly increased in lymph-node-positive
patients than in lymph-node-negative patients (19.2% vs. 1.8%, p<0.01) and increased in accordance with the number of positive lymph nodes. There fore, it suggested that there is a close relationship between LVI and lymph node metastasis.
In the lymph node-positive patients, the five year survival rate was significantly different between LVI(+) and LVI(-)(10.7% vs. 2.3%, p<0.01), while there was no significant difference in lymph-node-negative patients. Multivariate analysis
demonstrated
that LVI was not a significant factor influencing the prognosis, although it was significant in the univariate analysis.
We concluded that LVI is a possible factor influencing the prognosis and that it may therefore need careful search for LVI in stomach cancer.
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