Update of adjuvant chemotherapy for resected gastric cancer

Abstract

Gastric cancer is the second cause of cancer that is related to death and the fourth most common cancer, worldwide. Complete resection of cancer is the only curative treatment for gastric cancer. However, even if complete resection is possible, recurrence is frequently observed in Gastric patients. Therefore, adjuvant treatment modality for resectable gastric cancer is needed to increase the survival of patients. This study wants to describe the role of adjuvant chemotherapy for resectable gastric cancer, with updated data of recent studies. Several meta-analysis studies demonstrated a benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy for resectable gastric cancer. Due to the heterogeneity of the population and regimens, there is no consensus regarding the adjuvant chemotherapy. Recently published, well designed phase III studies demonstrated the statistically significance of adjuvant chemotherapy for the resectable gastric cancer, with the extended lymph node dissection. Further phase III trials, to determine the best regimen and schedule of adjuvant chemotherapy, was suggested to use the fluoropyrimidine based regimen as control group. © 2012 by The Korean Gastric Cancer Association.