[Early gastric cancer, results in a county hospital (author's transl)]

In a nine-year period, 46 patients with early gastric cancer were diagnosed and operated at a county hospital. Fiberscopy of the stomach raised the percentage of early gastric cancer from 1% in a five year pre-endoscopic period to 11.9% with endoscopy. On an average, subjects with early gastric cancer were 8 years younger than all cases with gastric carcinoma, those with the diffuse type according to Laurén significantly younger than those with the intestinal type, too. Postoperative mortality amounted to 6.5%; five more patients of 43 surviving the operation have died in the meanwhile. Besides synchronous and metachronous cancer in the resected stomach and other organs, late distant metastasis must be considered, too, in the follow-up of patients operated from early cancer of the stomach. These complications may endanger the five-years survival rate of 89% observed in the first series of our patients.