Prevention of gastric cancer: a challenging but feasible task

Despite its declining incidence gastric cancer still ranks as the second most common malignancy of the digestive tract, accounting for 10% of cancer deaths worldwide. At the time of the diagnosis less than 15% of the patients are in the stage of early cancer, the only stage in which a definite cure of gastric cancer is possible. Therefore the challenges are either early detection or even better prevention of gastric cancer. H. pylori has become recognized as the major risk factor for gastric adenocarcinoma. Epidemiological, biological, histomorphologic, molecular-genetic, epidemiological evidence and more recently few clinical trails have shown that H. pylori eradication has the potential to prevent the development of gastric cancer. Currently H. pylori eradication is an indication for the prevention of gastric cancer in patients and groups of individuals with strongly increased risk, but further investigations are still required before an implementation of a general and global policy to eradicate H. pylori for the prevention of gastric cancer can be instituted. At present time, the main challenge remains to find out at what point mucosal abnormalities are no longer reversible and gastric cancer development cannot be prevented despite H. pylori eradication.