The distance of proximal resection margin dose not significantly influence on the prognosis of gastric cancer patients after curative resection

PURPOSE: It is well known that the curative resection with an adequate proximal margin length is the most effective treatment in gastric cancer. However, despite surgeon's effort to achieve a sufficient proximal margin length, it is often difficult to obtain a recommended proximal margin length in some cases. Therefore, this study was planned to investigate the impact of the length of proximal margin on prognosis of overall survival. METHODS: Between June 1992 and December 2010, 1,888 gastric cancer patients who underwent gastrectomy with curative intent were reviewed. According to tumor's location (total vs. subtotal gastrectomy), pathologic T staging, and differentiation, univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the impact of the discrepancies of proximal margin length on overall survival. Also, the impact of the discrepancies of proximal margin length on local recurrence was assessed. RESULTS: The 5-year survival rate of positive proximal margin group was 5.9%. In negative proximal margin groups, multivariate analysis showed that the discrepancies of proximal margin length have no impact on overall survival. Kaplan-Meier analyses showed that there is no association between discrepancy of proximal margin length and local recurrence. CONCLUSION: It takes effort to secure a negative proximal margin in the surgical treatment of gastric cancer because of the poor prognosis of positive proximal margin. In negative proximal margin patients, there's no need to achieve an additional proximal margin length for long-term survival benefit because there was no impact of proximal margin length on overall survival and local recurrence.