Prognosis of Stage IIB Early Gastric Cancer Has a Unique and Dismal Property Putatively Requiring Postoperative Adjuvant Chemotherapy

Pathological T1 (pT1) gastric cancer showed excellent prognosis; however, lymph node metastasis sometimes reflects patients with dismal prognosis. In this study, we investigated prognosis of pT1 gastric cancer with lymph node metastasis to identify prognostic factors. Among 1442 gastric cancer patients between 2002 and 2010, 73 (5%) of pT1 with lymph node metastasis were identified. Univariate prognostic factors were applied to multivariate Cox proportional hazards model. First, among the 1442 patients, pT1 was composed of 333 patients with pT1a and 423 patients with pT1b, which included 9 (2.7%) and 64 cases (15.1%) with lymph node metastasis, respectively. Secondly, 10 (13.7%) patients of the 73 patients with lymph node metastasis showed tumor relapse. Univariate negative prognostic factors were tumor size (P = 0.03), intraoperative bleeding (P = 0.03), and perioperative transfusion (POT; P = 0.001), as well as 14th JGCA (Japanese Gastric Cancer Association) Stage (P < 0.0001), and multivariate analysis identified 14th JGCA Stage (P = 0.0004) and POT (P = 0.03) as independent prognostic factors. Third, pT1 gastric cancer representing pN3 (Stage IIB) was rare (n = 4) and unique entity from a prognostic point of view, exhibiting dismal prognosis (0% at 5 years). We thereafter identified 17 such cases from 5204 gastric cancer cases including the earliest cases. Prognosis of the 17 patients was unique in that recurrences occurred even 5 years after curative operation, and the frequent recurrent sites were bone. pT1 gastric cancer prognosis is robustly affected by pN3 and POT, and Stage IIB disease showed unique prognosis requiring special attention even after 5 years of operation.