[Chronology of recurrent gastric cancer]

The growth rate of 49 cases with recurrent gastric cancer was investigated with two tumor markers (AFP & CEA). The average doubling time of liver metastases (24.7 +/- 11.9 days) in 18 cases was significantly shorter from that of lymph node metastases (41.1 +/- 22.4 days) in 13 cases and of peritonitis carcinomatosa (42.2 +/- 19.6 days) in 18 cases. Latent period of recurrent cancer calculated by these doubling times was ranged from 1.0 to 3.5 years (mean 1.7 years) in liver metastases, from 1.0 to 5.0 years (mean 2.7 years) in lymph nodes metastases and from 1.5 to 6.0 years (mean 2.7 years) in peritonitis carcinomatosa. Only in liver metastases, positive correlation between the doubling time (X) and the duration of survival (Y) was observed by expressing the formula Y = 0.45 X-0.58 (R = 0.661, p less than 0.05). It is noteworthy that there is a significant correlation in spite of large differences in background subjects (systemic condition, size of metastatic lesion, etc.) and the growth rate of tumor is considered to play a very important role for determining the degree of biological malignancy of individual cancer patients in relation to survival.