Clinical outcome of gastric cancer patients with bone marrow metastases

The prognosis of gastric cancer patients with bone marrow metastases is extremely poor. The current study was conducted to evaluate the clinical outcomes of advanced gastric cancer patients with bone marrow metastases.

We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 26 advanced gastric cancer patients with bone marrow metastases who were treated at Soonchunhyang University Hospital between September 1986 and February 2009.

The median age was 46 years (range, 24 to 61 years). All patients had poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma, including 17 signet ring cell carcinomas. The majority of the patients had thrombocytopenia, anemia, and elevated lactate dehydrogenase levels. Sixteen patients (61.5%) received palliative chemotherapy (median, 4 cycles; range, 1 to 13 cycles). The median overall survival after detection of bone marrow metastases for the cohort of patients was 37 days (95% confidence interval, 12.5 to 61.5 days). The median overall survival after detection of bone marrow involvement was 11 days in the best supportive care group (range, 2 to 34 days) and 121 days (range, 3 to 383 days) in the palliative chemotherapy group (p<0.001). The causes of death were tumor progression (11 patients, 45%), brain hemorrhage (6 patients, 25%), infection (5 patients, 21%), and disseminated intravascular coagulation (1 patient, 4%). There were no chemotherapy-related deaths.

Palliative chemotherapy could be considered in advanced gastric cancer patients with bone marrow metastases as a treatment option.