[Trend of surgical multimodality treatment for advanced gastric cancer]

Gastric cancer remains one of the most common causes of cancer-related death in China. Radical operation is the only potentially curative therapy for advanced gastric cancer (AGC). D2 radical gastrectomy has been widely accepted as a standard surgical procedure for patients with AGC in China. Several clinical trials have revealed that more extended resection than D2 surgery has no impact on survival. In order to improve the prognosis of AGC patients, it is necessary to carry out the preoperative TNM staging for selecting a reasonable therapeutical modality before surgery. Multimodality treatment involving perioperative chemotherapy, radiotherapy or molecular targeting agents in addition to surgery have been thought to be promising treatment strategy. In this article, we present an update on the current literature regarding the trends of surgical multimodal treatment for the patients with AGC.