Actual 3-Year Survival After Laparoscopy-Assisted Gastrectomy for Gastric Cancer

OBJECTIVE: To analyze 3-year actual disease-free survival after laparoscopy-assisted gastrectomy for gastric cancer on the assumption that 3-year disease-free survival may represent 5-year overall survival. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis. SETTING: Department of surgery of a university hospital. PATIENTS: A total of 197 patients who underwent laparoscopy-assisted gastrectomy for gastric cancer from May 1998 to September 2007 and who were followed up for more than 3 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Feasibility and long-term survival rate with survival analysis by the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: Subtotal and total gastrectomies were performed in 178 and 19 patients, respectively. The scope of the lymph node dissections were D1 + beta (n = 152) and D2 (n = 45). There were 153, 28, 8, 6, 1, and 1 patients in stages Ia, Ib, II, IIIa, IIIb, and IV, respectively. The median follow-up was 45 months (range, 1-113 months), and there were 7 recurrences. Multivariate analysis of disease-specific survival showed that depth of invasion and lymph node metastasis influenced the prognosis independently. The actual 3-year disease-free survival rate for all patients was 96.9%. The 173 patients with early gastric cancer and 24 with advanced gastric cancer showed 98.8% and 79.1% actual 3-year disease-free survival rates, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Laparoscopy-assisted gastrectomy is acceptable oncologically in early gastric cancer if 3-year disease-free survival represents 5-year overall survival. Laparoscopy-assisted gastrectomy may also play an important role in the treatment of advanced gastric cancer.