Objectives: Adenocarcinoma of the stomach carries a dismal prognosis when it presents late. Our objective was to describe the location of the tumour, stage at presentation, resectability and survival in a cohort of patients with adenocarcinoma of the stomach, presenting to a tertiary referral centre.
Design and setting: Data were collected retrospectively from all patients with gastric neoplasms who presented to the University Surgical Unit, Colombo South Teaching Hospital from May 2000 to October 2006.
Results: Ninety three patients presented with malignant gastric neoplasms during this period. Majority (86/93) were adenocarcinomas. Mean age at presentation was 58.3 (range 33-83) years. Male to female ratio was 3.15:1. 52.6% of tumours were in the proximal stomach involving the cardia. Thirty per cent involved the body, and 17.5% the distal stomach. 93% had Stage III or IV disease at presentation. Twenty seven patients (32.5%) had resectable tumours with a mean survival of 25.3 months. Five year survival was less than 5%, in patients who were not offered surgical resection. There were no patients in our series with early gastric cancer.
Conclusion: All our patients presented with advanced gastric cancer and the majority had unresectable disease. The high proportion of patients having proximal gastric carcinoma is similar to the recent changes seen in the west.