Healthy Behaviors and All-cause Mortality among Korean Gastric Cancer Survivors

The incidence, prevalence and survival rates of gastric cancer are high, and the prognostic effects of healthy behaviors among survivors have not been well investigated. Therefore, We aimed to assess the effects of postdiagnosis healthy behaviors and behavior changes after gastric cancer diagnosis on all-cause mortality.

As a population-based retrospective cohort study, we used a cancer public library sample DB of gastric cancer patients between 2012 and 2019. Information from regular health check-up examinations were used to investigate their anthropometric measures, physical activities, alcohol consumption, and smoking status before and after cancer diagnosis. Hazard ratios (HRs) for all-cause deaths with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated via the Cox proportional hazards model.

We analyzed 9,717 gastric cancer patients and 5,929 of those as a subgroup to assess the effects of behavior changes. Reduced mortality was shown among cancer patients who met the recommended criteria after the cancer diagnosis for physical activity (adjusted HR = 0.67 [95% CI=0.49-0.93], mean frequencies of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week: ≥5 days vs. 0 days) and smoking cessation (0.77 [0.61-0.97], smoking status: never-smokers vs. current smokers). Participants who reported enhancement in behaviors had significantly lower mortality than the others who reported no or limited changes in physical activity (0.73 [0.55-0.96]) and smoking status (0.56 [0.38-0.83]).

The current study highlights the advantages of physical activity and smoking cessation in reducing mortality, and these benefits are even greater when patients improve their behavior after cancer diagnosis.