Gastric cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Korea. The high mortality mortality rate of gastric cancer is partly attributed to its late detection and the perfomance of surgery at an advanced stage of disease. So, its early detection
and
treatment of gastric carcinoma will improve the current unfavourable prognosis of gastric cancer. Progress in diagnostic endoscopy has made it possible to detect the early gastric cancer which has excellent postoperative outcome because of its
high
curability.
In this retrospective study, 181 cases of early gastric cancer which have been resected at the Korea University Anam Hospital from January, 1982 to December 1992 were reviewed with emphasis on incidence, macroscopic classification, clinical
significance, and prognosis in order to elucidate the clincal picture of early gastric cancer. The proportion of early gastric cancer was 8.1% of all gastric cancer and 0.29% of total patients who underwent gastrofiberscopy. The ratio of male to
female
was 1.8 : 1, and the peak age of incidence was 6th decade(35.4%). The lesion was most commonly found in antrum(51.1%) and lesser curvature side(73.1%). EGC type II was the most common macroscopic type (31.1%). The size of lesion was mostly less
than
3cm(68.1%) and the larger lesions showed the higher rate of invasion to submucosa and lymph node metastasis. The percentage of lymph node metastasis was much higher in lesion infiltrating to submucosa(20.0%) than mucosa-confined cancer. According
to
cancer all type. tubular adenocarcinoma was most common(74.8%). There was no correlation between cancer cell type and the incidence of lymph node metastasis the diagnostic accuracy by gastrofiberscopic observation was 83.5%. The 5-year survival
rate of
total early gastric cancer patients was 94.2%.(Korean J Gastroenterol 1994 ; 26 : 789-799)
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