| Abstract: | A survey was made of all patients treated for gastric cancer on the clinic services of the Stanford University Hospital during the 30-year period 1919 to 1948. During the last decade of the survey there were impressive gains in the surgical treatment of this disease. It was possible from 1944 to 1948 to do a gastric resection on half the patients seen with cancer of the stomach. Also, there was a pronounced decrease in resection mortality so that from 1939 to 1948 the mortality rate for subtotal gastrectomy for cancer was 3 per cent.The over-all five-year survival rate was discouragingly low—4.6 per cent. On the other hand, 23 per cent of those surviving gastric resection lived for five years.A survey of the management of carcinoma of the stomach from 1939 to 1948 was made in 11 general hospitals in San Francisco. A wide range of resectability and resection mortality rates was observed. The cases from these hospitals were combined with those from Stanford for the same period to form a composite group of 1,128 patients. Analysis of this group of cases from 12 representative hospitals in San Francisco showed encouraging trends toward higher resectability rates with a lower resection mortality. |
