Background: A retrospective study was designed to evaluate the clinicopathologic characteristics and prognosis of gastric stump carcinoma (GSC) after gastrectomy for gastric adenocarcinoma.
Study design: A comparison of the clinicopathologic features was made between 12 cases of GSC and 27 cases of remnant carcinoma (RC) following gastrectomy for adenocarcinoma. The various factors influencing survival of both groups of patients were evaluated separately and by multivariate analysis.
Results: Gastric stump carcinoma emerges late after initial gastrectomy and has a significant tendency toward lymph node metastasis. No difference was observed between the survival curves for patients with GSC or RC after gastrectomy for malignancy. Serosal invasion was the factor most affecting survival.
Conclusions: Early diagnosis is most important for management of the disease, and only patients with T2 staged GSC according to the Union Internationale Contre le Cancer classification system might benefit from extensive lymphadenectomies.