Clinicopathological significance of intestinal and diffuse types of gastric carcinoma in Taiwan Chinese

The present study sought to evaluate the clinicopathological features of our gastric cancer patients in terms of a modified Lauren's histological classification and compared the results with those from studies from Japan and Western countries. A total of 536 consecutive patients with gastric cancer were treated surgically between December 1987 and December 1993. A clinicopathological analysis was only performed for intestinal types (IT) and diffuse types (DT) of gastric cancer because patients falling into the 'other' category were too small to produce meaningful data. Of 536 cases of gastric cancer, 268 (50%) were IT, 231 (43.1%) were DT and 37 (6.9%) were of the other type. The overall IT:DT ratio was 1.2. Gastric cancer patients with IT (in contrast to DT) were characterized by older age, male dominance, smaller tumours, the tumour often being located in the lower and upper third of the stomach and less peritoneal metastasis. In both sexes, the peak incidence of gastric cancer patients was in the age group 65-74 years. Men had higher proportions of IT carcinoma than women. The IT:DT ratio for men and women was 1.4 and 0.4, respectively. Although the increased ratio of IT:DT paralleled the advance of age in both sexes, the transitional age (the age at which the IT:DT ratio exceeds 1.0) in male patients (age group 51-64 years) was earlier than for female patients (age group 65-74 years). Patients with IT gastric cancer had a significantly better survival rate than those with DT. However, the type of carcinoma (IT or DT) was not an independent predictor of survival. These data indicate that gastric cancer in Taiwan Chinese has different biological behaviour in terms of IT and DT. The clinicopathological features in IT and DT carcinoma are similar to studies from Japan and from Western countries.