Outcomes of Abdominal Total Gastrectomy for Type II and III Gastroesophageal Junction Tumors: Single Center's Experience in Korea

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the surgical outcomes of abdominal total gastrectomy, without mediastinal lymph node dissection for type II and III gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancers.

Materials and methods: We retrospectively reviewed surgical outcomes in 67 consecutive patients with type II and III GEJ cancers that were treated by the surgical resection between 2004 and 2008.

Results: Thirty (45%) patients had type II and 37 (55%) had type III tumor. Among the 65 (97%) patients with curative surgery, 21 (31%) patients underwent the extended total gastrectomy with trans-hiatal distal esophageal resection, and in 44 (66%) patients, abdominal total gastrectomy alone was done. Palliative gastrectomy was performed in two patients due to the accompanying peritoneal metastasis. The postoperative morbidity and mortality rates were 21.4% and 1.5%, respectively. After a median follow up of 36 months, the overall 3-years was 68%, without any differences between the Siewert types or the operative approaches (transhiatal approach vs. abdominal approach alone). On the univariate analysis, the T stage, N stage and R0 resection were found to be associated with the survival, and multivariate analysis revealed that the N stage was a poor independent prognostic factor for survival.

Conclusions: Type II and III GEJ cancers may successfully be treated with the abdominal total gastrectomy, without mediastinal lymph node dissection in the Korean population.