Pattern of gastric cancer resection in the Memphis metropolitan area (MMA).

e14633 Background: Quality of cancer surgery impacts patient outcomes. We evaluated the pattern and quality of gastric cancer resections and correlated them with postoperative and long term survival in the MMA. Methods: Institutional review of all curative-intent gastric cancer resections from 1999-2008 excluding those who received preoperative therapy. Good quality resection (GQR) was defined as R0 with ≥ 15 lymph nodes (LN) examined. Log rank test for survival comparisons, Wilcoxon Mann Whitney for comparison between medians and proportional hazard models were employed. Results: Table: Cohort characteristics (N=112). GQR rate: 26%. Only 6% of patients had preoperative endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) or laparoscopic staging. Unexpected metastatic disease was discovered intraoperatively in 25% of the patients. R-status (p< 0.001), but not number of LN examined, correlated with survival. Tumor stage independently predicted survival on univariate analysis, while GQR, age, and number of comorbidities did not. Co...