The coexistence of gastric cancer and duodenal ulcers

The records of 356 gastric carcinoma patients who were treated surgically were reviewed. Among them, six patients (1.7%) had duodenal ulcers. Five cancers of the six patients were "early" gastric cancers classified as type "IIc" or "IIc + III" according to "The general rules for the gastric cancer study in surgery and pathology". The cancers of the six patients were located in the lower half of the stomach. Gastric secretion activity was normal in four and above normal in two cases. Three had signet ring cell carcinomas, two had poorly differentiated adenocarcinomas and one had a well differentiated adinocarcinoma. Our results were similar to other results reported in many papers. In Japan gastric carcinomas coexisting with duodenal ulcers were more often confirmed in the "early" gastric cancer stage. This is probably because endoscopic examinations of the stomach were more often performed in Japan than in other countries because of te large number of gastric disease patients. In addition, it is assumed that the growth of gastric cancer in the stomach is slow because of the very active gastric secretion.