Factors influencing 5-year survival in gastric malignancies after total gastrectomy

One hundred consecutive patients were analysed who had been treated with total gastrectomy in the Second Department of Surgery, Helsinki University Central Hospital, for malignancies of the stomach from 1977 to 1982. Hospital mortality was 8%. The 5-year survival rate in this selected group of patients was 43% and 34% for patients with gastric cancer. Patients with metastases died within 42 months, more than half of them within one year. However, palliative total gastrectomy is recommended in proximally located obstructing tumours. Radical operations on patients with tumour growth to adjacent tissue and organs had no effect on the 5-year survival rates compared to those on patients with metastases. Surgical removal of the primary tumour is recommended in these cases as well. Patients without lymph node metastases had a survival rate of 67% but the prognosis was even better in cases with intact serosa (96%).