Characteristics of Gastric Cancer in Lebanon: a Descriptive Study from a Single Institutional Experience

The epidemiology of gastric cancer in the Middle East has never been described. Therefore, the characteristics of gastric cancer in the Lebanese population will be reported in this study.

A retrospective study that included all patients diagnosed with gastric cancer at Hotel Dieu de France University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon between 2010 and 2016 was conducted. All eligible patients were reviewed for demographic and epidemiologic analysis.

The study included 123 patients diagnosed with gastric cancer. The median age at diagnosis was 59 years (range 15-72 years), and the median ECOG performance status was 2 (range 1-4). Most patients were metastatic at diagnosis (52.8%), and diffuse pathology type was predominant (39%). HER2 was positive in 16.2% and correlated with the occurrence of hepatic metastasis (p = 0.048). The HER2 status did not differ significantly between the histological subtypes, the site of the tumor, the stage of the gastric cancer at diagnosis, and the recurrence of cancer (p > 0.05).

Gastric cancer in the Lebanese population is characterized by aggressive features such as advanced stage at diagnosis, high prevalence of diffuse type histology, and HER2 positivity.