[Results of treatment of perforated stomach tumors]

Perforation of a stomach tumour is a rare experience. It occurred to 0.4 per cent of patients treated by the authors for gastro-intestinal tumours and to four per cent of those on whom emergency operations had to be performed. Surgical morbidity was found to be low but so were the chances of survival which ranged between eight and 44 months. That was equally true for patients who had apparently undergone radical surgery. Those findings were not really surprising, since it was known that only advanced carcinomas would perforate. Tumour perforation resulted in spread of carcinoma cells across the peritoneum and thus in canalicular metastasation. That would move the tumour into a phase which could no longer be curatively tackled by surgical approaches alone. Nevertheless, in cases of emergency, surgery should be as radical as possible, and the technique chosen should be identical with that used in no-emergency surgery.