Prognosis of Elderly Patients with Advanced Gastric Cancer without Serosal Invasion

The impact of age on the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer is controversial. This study aimed to investigate the clinicopathologic features and prognosis of elderly advanced gastric cancer patients without serosal invasion compared to their younger counterparts.

We retrospectively evaluated 43 elderly patients with advanced gastric cancer without serosal invasion. The clinicopathologic findings were compared between the elderly (age >70 years) and young (age <36 years) patients.

Significantly higher numbers of elderly patients had tumours with differentiated histology, whereas more young patients had tumours with undifferentiated histology (P < 0.01). Curability (risk ratio, 3.122; confidence interval, 1.242-4.779; P < 0.001) was an independent prognostic factor of survival. The 5-year survival rates were not significantly different between the elderly and the young patients according to the absence of serosal invasion (80.0% vs. 77.9%; P = 0.654) and undergoing curative resection (82.0% vs. 78.9%; P = 0.312). Meanwhile, among the elderly patients, those who underwent curative resection had a better survival rate than those with non-curative resection (82.0% vs. 67.8%; P < 0.001).

Elderly patients with advanced gastric cancer without serosal invasion do not have a worse prognosis than their younger counterparts, indicating that age does not impact the prognosis of advanced gastric cancer. The important prognostic factor was whether the patients underwent curative resection.