[High relative risk of gastric stump cancer in young gastric resection patients]

In a large necropsy series, 31 cases of gastric stump cancer were found among patients operated for gastric or duodenal ulcer since 6 years or more. In the same series, there were 331 gastric cancer cases among patients without previous gastric surgery for benign disease. Overall age- and sex-specific relative risk for stump cancer in previously resected patients was 1.5; however, the relative risk was 2.5 in the patients operated below age 45, and it was only 0.6 in the patients resected over that age. The relative risk of stump cancer in the former group of patients was two- or three-fold than in the latter, at correspondent intervals of time since resection too. In the present material, the age at surgery appears to be a more important factor in determining the relative risk than the time interval since surgery.