Surgical Management of Gastric Cancer: A Review

Surgery plays a critical role in the management of all stages of gastric cancer.

For patients with early gastric cancer and low risk of lymph node metastasis, endoscopic therapy or surgery alone is potentially curative. Novel techniques, such as sentinel lymph node biopsy, may allow for greater use of stomach-sparing procedures that could improve quality of life without compromising oncologic outcomes; however, experience with these techniques is rare outside of East Asia, and studies of long-term outcomes are still ongoing. Patients with later-stage localized gastric cancer benefit from more extensive lymphadenectomy and multimodality therapy, as they are at risk for nodal and distant metastases. There have been recent advances in chemotherapy that have led to improved survival, but the optimal sequencing of multimodality therapy is still being investigated. Better systemic therapy may also increase the role of surgery for patients with oligometastatic disease. There are ongoing studies examining the efficacy of peritoneal-directed therapies in both patients with low-volume peritoneal disease and patients at high risk of peritoneal recurrence.

The management of gastric cancer continues to evolve. Surgeons should be aware of novel surgical approaches currently under investigation as well as how surgery fits into the contemporary multidisciplinary approach to this disease.