The Clinicopathological Features and Staging at Presentation of Gastric Cancer: A Single-Center Retrospective Study

Introduction Gastric cancer (GC) is the third leading cause of cancer death, with most patients diagnosed at a later stage, with distant metastasis at the time of presentation, contributing to poor prognosis. GC has been associated with nonspecific clinical presentations, which cause a time delay for patients to seek for medical advice. This study aims to identify the clinicopathological features of GC patients and correlate time delay of the diagnosis to the staging of the disease. Materials and Methods This is a single-center retrospective study of GC patients diagnosed from January 2012 to December 2018. All relevant data of GC patient diagnosed during this time period were extracted from the patients’ case notes. Results A total of 69 GC patients were included in this study, with male preponderance and mean age of 62 years old. The top three symptoms presented are dyspepsia or ingestion (47.8%), weight loss (43.5%), and nausea or vomiting (33.3%). The mean time delay was 3.7 months. Patients presented with weight loss have a significantly longer average time delay of 4.88 months. Most tumor lesion was found at the distal stomach (43.5%), while 74.5% tested negative for Helicobacter pylori. Most patients were diagnosed at Stage IV (52.6%) and Stage III (36.8%) of the disease, with poorly differentiated (67.7%) histological features which have poor prognosis. Discussion and Conclusion No evidence of specific symptom or combination of symptoms predicts higher risk of GC. Regardless of the number of symptoms presented or the time delay, most GC patients were diagnosed at later stage of the disease. The study shows the importance of GC screening in Malaysia to ensure early detection, even before a symptom presented.