Background/aims: Gastric cancer is an infiltrative disease involving deep layers of the stomach. It is of interest whether the stomach motility in gastric cancer patients may be altered. We employed a homemade applied potential tomographic system to study the features of water gastric emptying in gastric cancer patients.
Methodology: Twelve electrodes were placed in a circular array around the upper abdomen of studied subjects. After drinking 500 mL of test water, paired electrodes injected an electrical current and another 9 paired electrodes recorded signals. This procedure was processed in a rotated order for 50 min while the serial changes in altered resistivity were constructed to display water gastric emptying curve. Before surgery, 27 histologically confirmed gastric cancer patients were enrolled to measure their gastric emptying parameters including half emptying time (T1/2) and area under the curve (AUC). Consequently, tumor parameters were obtained from their resected specimens. In addition, 28 healthy controls were recruited to compare water gastric emptying.
Results: The half emptying times of gastric cancer patients and controls were 15.51 +/- 2.21 (SE) and 16.82 +/- 2.13 min, respectively (NS). While their measured areas under the curve were also comparable (1719.5 +/- 169.4 vs. 1896.0 +/- 143.6 arbitrary unit, NS). Regarding with various patient factors to influence water gastric emptying among gastric cancer patients, those patients presenting nausea (T1/2: 8.3 +/- 1.44 vs. 18.5 +/- 2.8 min, P<0.05) or free of regional lymph node metastasis (9.98 +/- 2.53 vs. 22.7 +/- 3.84 min, P<0.05) had a rapid water gastric emptying. Other demographic and tumor characteristics including gender, age, smoking, body size, serum levels of tumor markers, cancer location/size, invasion layer, Helicobacter pylori colonization and histological subtype did not influence water gastric emptying.
Conclusions: Water gastric emptying in non-obstructive gastric cancer patients is mainly undisturbed. However, some obvious dyspeptic symptom or tumor nature appears leading to a rapid water gastric emptying.