Background: Despite curative surgery for gastric cancer, many patients die of recurrent cancer. Few studies have investigated the time to recurrence after curative resection for gastric cancer.
Methods: Data were collected prospectively between December 1987 and December 2006. A total of 1,549 patients underwent curative resection of adenocarcinoma of the stomach at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. Among them, 419 patients had recurrence; they were divided into early recurrence (<2 years) and late recurrence (≥2 years). The clinicopathological characteristics, survival time after recurrence, and recurrence patterns were compared between the two groups.
Results: Multivariate analysis showed that stage III gastric cancer patients with early recurrence had larger tumors and more lymph node metastasis than patients with late recurrence, while no difference between early and late recurrence was observed in stage I and II patients. Early recurrence was associated with more distant metastasis than was late recurrence. Patients with advanced TNM stage tended to die within 2 years after recurrence.
Conclusions: Gastric cancer patients with larger tumors and more lymph node metastasis tended to have early recurrence, especially stage III patients. Advanced TNM stage was associated with early cancer death after recurrence.