Age-specific impact on the survival of gastric cancer patients with distant metastasis: an analysis of SEER database

// Xinxing Li 1, * , Weijun Wang 1, * , Canping Ruan 1, * , Yi Wang 1, * , Haolu Wang 2 , Xiaowen Liang 2 , Yanping Sun 1 and Zhiqian Hu 1 1 Department of General Surgery, Changzheng Hospital, The Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200003, China 2 Therapeutics Research Centre, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Woolloongabba, QLD 4102, Australia * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Xiaowen Liang, email: x.liang@uq.edu.au Yanping Sun, email: sunyanping2003@163.com Zhiqian Hu, email: huzhiq163@163.com Keywords: gastric cancer, distant metastasis, age, survival Received: December 08, 2016     Accepted: August 28, 2017     Published: September 28, 2017 ABSTRACT The age-specific impact on the survival of gastric cancer patients with distant metastasis is still unclear. In this study, we identified 11, 299 gastric cancer patients with distant metastasis between 2004 and 2013 from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results population-based dataset. Patients were divided into young (≤60) and elderly groups (>60). Kaplan–Meier methods and multivariable Cox regression were used for the analysis of long-term survival outcomes and risk factors. There were significant differences between the two groups in terms of race, primary site, grade, histologic type, surgery, marital status and clinical T stage (P<0.05). The 1- and 3-year cancer specific survival rates were 29.0% and 6.2% in young group and 22.8% and 4.8% in elderly group in both univariate (X 2 =116.430, P<0.001) and multivariate analysis (P<0.001). Young patients had significantly better 1- and 3-year cancer specific survival than elderly patients in each T stage. Age was further validated as an independent survival factor in all T stages (T1, T2, T3, T4 and T X , P<0.05). In conclusion, age was an independent prognostic factor for gastric cancer patients with distant metastasis.