Clinicopathologic Characteristics Of Young Gastric Carcinoma Patients

Background and Objective: Gastric carcinoma is a common disease that usually affects elder patients, rarely young patients. The aim of this study is to find out the specific clinicopathologic characteristics of young gastric carcinoma patients, as comparing with the elder patients. Methods: A total of 368 patients with gastric carcinoma, including 36 cases of young patients (age≤40) and 332 cases of elder patients (age >40), were involved in this retrospectively study. All cases were operated in the second affiliated hospital, school of medicine, Zhejiang University during the period from December 1997 to December 2000. The chi-squared test was emplyed to evaluate the statistical significance of difference and P value less than 0.05 was considered to be significant. Results: In all 368 patients with gastric carcinoma, 36 (9.8%) were divided into the young age group. The male/female ratio of young patients was 1.12:1, whereas in those elder patients the ratio was 2.46:1. The male/female ratio was significantly increased in young patients (P=0.024). The ratioof digestive tract hemorrhage was much lower in the young patients, while the ratio of type Tl tumor (invaded lamina propria or submucosa) was significantly higher in the young group. Significantly more young patients were poorly differentiated and with signet ring cell carcinoma differentiation. Similar features in the lymph nodal involvement, tumor metastasis, tumor TNM stage, Borrmann type and the resection rate of cancer were observed in both young patients and elder patients. Conclusions: Compared with elder patients, young gastric carcinoma patients have some specific clinicopathologic features, such as: ? higher percentage of female patients;? lower incidence of digestive tract hemorrhage;? more type Tl tumor;? much poorly differentiated and with more signet ring cell carcinoma differentiation. These findings would be helpful to our clinical doctors to have a better understanding on this special, young group of gastric carcinoma.