Survival Rate of Gastric Cancer Patients in Jordan: Secondary Data Analysis

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer accounts for 2.7% of all newly diagnosed cancer cases in Jordan. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to calculate the survival rate and its determinants among Jordanian patients who were diagnosed with gastric cancer between 2010 and 2014. METHODS: A descriptive study was conducted based on secondary analysis of data from the Jordan Cancer Registry during the period of 2010-2014. Only cancer-related deaths were recorded as “death” in the survival analysis. RESULTS: A total of 1388 new cases of gastric cancer were recorded between 2010 and 2014. Of these, 872 (62.8%) were Jordanians and 60.5% were males. The mean age at diagnosis was 58.9 years and the median follow-up time was 1.6 years. The 5-year survival rate decreased significantly from 89% in patients with well-differentiated cancer to 32% in patients with poorly differentiated cancer (P=.005). The overall 5-year survival rate was 37.7% and the median survival was 1.48 years (95% CI 1.179-1.783). The 5-year survival rate decreased significantly with increasing age and with advanced stage of the disease: the 5-year survival rate was 75% for localized-stage, 48% for regional-stage, and 22.7% for distant-metastasis disease (P=.005). CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that the overall 5-year survival rate among patients with gastric cancer in Jordan between 2010 and 2014 was 37.7%, which is higher than the reported rates from different countries in the Eastern Mediterranean region such as Egypt.