[Results of long follow-up study for peptic ulcer patients treated with gastrectomy]

This clinical study was based on 307 peptic ulcer patients treated with gastrectomy over a 15-year period in our department. Numbers of surgical cases for peptic ulcer remarkably decreased after the introduction of cimetidine in 1980. A median age of gastric ulcer patients was in sixth decades, whereas duodenal ulcer in fifth decades. Surgical indications were 60 percent in intractable ulcer, 30 percent in complication as bleeding, stenosis and perforation, and 10 percent in suspicious malignancy. After cimetidine introduction intractable cases decreased from 63 percent to 44 percent. There was no remarkable difference in the fasting and peak plasma secretin concentrations in postprandial period between peptic ulcer patients and normal controls, however, in gastrectomized patients the plasma secretin response decreased in postprandial state. Follow up study was made on a point of postoperative recurrence and postgastrectomy syndrome. Small stomach syndromes such as insufficient food intake and body weight loss were observed in 10 and 30 percent in the gastrectomized patients, but 86 percent of the patients were satisfied with the results of operation. We concluded that gastrectomy for peptic ulcer was treatment of choice from the point of low recurrence rate and no severe postgastrectomy disorders.