[Stage-dependent approach to stomach cancer]

Accurate staging by unambiguously defined, comparable criteria is essential for a phase-adjusted therapeutic concept to cope with gastric carcinoma. Decision-making on gastrectomy or subtotal gastric resection has to depend primarily on tumour localisation and prognosis by histological classification according to Laurén. Between January 1, 1980, and May 1, 1988, operations for gastric carcinoma were performed on 203 patients at the Surgical Department of Charité, with gastric resection being applied to 144 of them. Postoperative lethality amounted to nine per cent. Indications were established in 66 cases for gastrectomy and in 78 patients for subtotal gastric resection. Two-year survival rates were 52 per cent for the intestinal cell type and 35 per cent for the diffuse type. Prognosis can be improved by radical resection and extensive lymph node removal at the first two lymph node stages. Resection of other infiltrated organ regions may quite often prove necessary for oncological radicality. Splenectomy will be chosen for stomach carcinomas localised in the upper and medium thirds or in tumour stages III and IV.