Background: Patients with metastatic gastric cancer are usually not good operative candidates. Recent improvements in surgical techniques allowed palliative gastric resection and other surgical procedures.
Method: We have examined the place of palliative gastrectomy and its impact on survival in stage IV gastric cancer patients admitted in 2003-2008 period.
Results: From a total of 295 patients with gastric cancer, we found 140 patients with stage IV disease; 85 of them had no resection (45 received only chemotherapy) and 55 underwent palliative gastric resection with or without postoperative chemotherapy. Mean survival in non-operated patients with chemotherapy alone was 6.4 months, not significantly different to that of the patients with palliative surgery alone (8.9 months). The group with palliative surgery and adjuvant therapy had a significantly better mean survival (17.8 months). Mortality and morbidity rates associated with palliative surgery were 9% and 34.5%, respectively.
Conclusions: These data suggest that palliative surgery associated with adjuvant chemotherapy can improve survival in patients with stage IV gastric cancer.