Partial Gastrectomy is Associated with Improved Overall Survival in Signet-Ring Cell Gastric Cancer

Signet-ring cell gastric cancer (SRGC) is a histological variant of gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC) with a worse prognosis compared to non-signet-ring cell gastric cancer (NSRGC). To our knowledge, the overall survival (OS) among patients with SRGC undergoing total/near-total (TG) versus partial gastrectomy (PG) has never been reported from a large-scale Western database.

We performed a retrospective analysis of patients with both SRGC and NSRGC using The National Cancer Database.

In total, 17,086 patients were included. Patients who underwent TG versus PG were 25.5% (n = 770) versus 74.5% (n = 2246) for SRGC, and 20.9% (n = 2943) versus 79.1% (n = 11,127) for NSRGC, respectively. Patients who had SRGC were more likely to undergo TG (25.5% versus 20.9% P< 0.0001). Patients with distal gastric tumors were less likely to undergo TG (16.5% versus 25.4% P < 0.0001). Patients undergoing PG for the SRGC histological variant had better OS (HR = 0.68, CI=0.61-0.76; P < 0.0001) versus those who underwent TG. Similarly, NSRGC patients undergoing PG also had improved OS, but to a lesser extent (HR = 0.91, CI = 0.85-0.96; P= 0.002). Overall, PG for GAC was associated with improved OS compared to TG, although the OS benefit is more profound in the SRGC histological variant (P < 0.0001).

Our results show that TG is not associated with improved OS in patients who undergo gastrectomy for GAC, even when adjusted for tumor location. The survival differences are more pronounced in the SRGC histology variant. The worst survival is observed in patients with SRGC who undergo TG after adjusting for different covariates.