Clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of gastric signet ring cell carcinoma

The clinicopathological features and prognosis of gastric signet ring cell carcinoma (GSRC) remain controversial, particularly with regard to sensitivity to postoperative adjuvant therapy.

To compare the pathological features of GSRC with those of gastric adenocarcinoma of different degrees of differentiation and the differences in survival prognosis between the different disease processes.

By screening gastric cancer patients from 2010 to 2015 in the database of Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results, and collecting the clinicopathological and prognostic data of gastric cancer patients who underwent surgery from January 2014 to December 2016 in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, we analyzed the general pathological characteristics of GSRC by the chi-square test. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to compare the factors affecting the survival and prognosis of early and advanced gastric adenocarcinoma. The Kaplan-Meier curves were plotted to reveal the survival difference between early and advanced GSRC and different differentiated types of gastric adenocarcinoma. The prognosis model of advanced GSRC was established with R software, and the area under curve (AUC) and C-index were used to assess the accuracy of the model.

Analysis of pathological features revealed that signet ring-cell carcinoma (SRC) was more frequently seen in younger (< 60 years), female, and White patients compared to non-SRC patients. SRC was less commonly associated with early gastric cancer (EGC) (23.60% vs 39.10%), lower N0 (38.61% vs 61.03%), and larger tumour sizes > 5 cm (31.15% vs 27.10%) compared to the differentiated type, while the opposite was true compared to the undifferentiated type. Survival prognostic analysis found no significant difference in the prognosis of SRC patients among EGC patients. In contrast, among advanced gastric cancer (AGC) patients, the prognosis of SRC patients was correlated with age, race, tumour size, AJCC stage, T-stage, and postoperative adjuvant therapy. The predictive model showed that the 3-year AUC was 0.787, 5-year AUC was 0.806, and C-index was 0.766. Compared to non-SRC patients, patients with SRC had a better prognosis in EGC [hazard ratio (HR): 0.626, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.427-0.919, P < 0.05] and a worse prognosis in AGC (HR: 1.139, 95%CI: 1.030-1.258, P < 0.05). When non-SRC was divided into differentiated and undifferentiated types for comparison, it was found that in EGC, SRC had a better prognosis than differentiated and undifferentiated types, while there was no significant difference between differentiated and undifferentiated types. In AGC, there was no significant difference in prognosis between SRC and undifferentiated types, both of which were worse than differentiated types. A prognostic analysis of postoperative adjuvant therapy for SRC in patients with AGC revealed that adjuvant postoperative radiotherapy or chemotherapy significantly improved patient survival (34.6% and 36.2% vs 18.6%, P < 0.05).

The prognosis of SRC is better than that of undifferentiated type, especially in EGC, and its prognosis is even better than that of differentiated type. SRC patients can benefit from early detection, surgical resection, and aggressive adjuvant therapy.