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Updated: Aug 20, 2026
Laparoscopic Radical Gastrectomy for Remnant Gastric Cancer
Published on: October 31, 2025
Prediction of recurrence after radical surgery for gastric cancer: a scoring system obtained from a prospective
Daniele Marrelli1, Alfonso De Stefano, Giovanni de Manzoni
1Department of General Surgery and Surgical Oncology, University of Siena, Siena, Italy.
Objective:
The aim of this prospective multicenter study was to define a scoring system for the prediction of tumor recurrence after potentially curative surgery for gastric cancer.
Summary Background Data:
The estimation of the risk of recurrence in individual patient may be relevant in clinical practice, to apply adjuvant therapies after surgery, and plan an adequate follow-up program. Only a few studies, most of which were retrospective or performed on a limited number of patients, have developed a prognostic score in patients with gastric cancer.
Methods:
A total of 536 patients who underwent UICC R0 resection between 1988 and 1998 at 3 surgical departments in Italy were considered. All patients were followed up using a standard protocol after discharge from the hospital. The mean follow-up period was 56 +/- 44 months, and 94 +/- 29 months for surviving patients. The scoring system was calculated on the basis of a logistic regression model, where the presence of the recurrence was the dependent variable, and clinicopathologic variables were the covariates.
Results:
Recurrence occurred in 272 of 536 patients (50.7%). The scoring system for the prediction of the risk in individual cases gave values ranging from 1.4 to 99.9; the model distributed most cases in the extremes of the range. The risk of recurrence increased remarkably with score values; it was only 5% in patients with a score below 10, up to 95.4% in patients with a score of 91 to 100. No recurrence was observed in 43 patients with a score below 4, whereas all of the 56 patients with a score over 97 presented a recurrence. The model correctly predicted recurrence in 227 of 272 patients (sensitivity, 83.5%), whereas the absence of recurrence was correctly predicted in 214 of 264 patients (specificity, 81.1%); the overall accuracy was 82.2%. Prognostic score was clearly superior to UICC tumor stage in predicting recurrence. The high effectiveness of the score was confirmed in preliminary data of a validation study.
Conclusions:
The scoring system obtained with a regression model on the basis of our follow-up data is useful for defining subgroups of patients at a very low or very high risk of tumor recurrence after radical surgery for gastric cancer. Final results of the validation study are essential for a clinical application of the model.
