Prognostic predictors of patients with carcinoma of the gastric cardia.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: This study gives insight into survival predictors and clinicopathological features of carcinoma of the gastric cardia. METHODOLOGY: The study included 233 patients who underwent operation for carcinoma of the gastric cardia. Clinicopathological prognostic variables were evaluated as predictors of long-term survival by univariate and multivariate analysis. Cox regression was used for multivariate analysis and survival curves were drawn by the Kaplan- Meier method. RESULTS: Carcinoma of the gastric cardia was characterized by positive lymph node metastasis (77.3%), serosal invasion (83.3%) and more stage III or IV tumors (72.5%). Overall 5-year survival rate was 21.9% and median survival period was 24 months. The 5-year survival rate was influenced by tumor size, depth on invasion, lymph node metastasis, extent of lymph node dissection, disease stage, operation methods and resection margin. CONCLUSIONS: The absent of serosal invasion and lymph node metastasis, curative resection should be considered to be the favourable predictors of long-term survival of patients with carcinoma of the gastric cardia.