Intestinal and diffuse gastric cancer: a retrospective study comparing primary sites

Abstract Objective We assessed differences in primary sites and spread patterns of the intestinal and diffuse subtypes of gastric carcinoma. We also compared survival outcomes based on spread patterns. Materials and methods For this retrospective IRB-approved study, our institutional imaging database was mined for patients with gastric cancer. We included 99 treatment-naive patients. Patient demographics, pathologic data, tumor classification, primary tumor site, and metastasis sites were recorded. Pearson's chi-squared test was used to correlate tumor pathology with metastatic sites. Kaplan–Meier survival curves were compared between baseline metastatic types. A heat map was created based on the relative frequencies of metastatic sites for each primary tumor site. Results Of the 99 patients, 66 patients had intestinal and 33 had diffuse gastric carcinoma. The intestinal subtype was significantly associated with hepatic metastases ( p p p p p  = 0.0015). Patients with peritoneal metastases had a significantly shorter overall survival than patients without peritoneal metastases ( p p  = 0.005, p  = 0.0002, and p  = 0.0005, respectively). Presence of hepatic metastases had no effect on survival ( p  = 0.16). Conclusion Recognizing distinctive spread patterns for intestinal versus diffuse gastric carcinoma can aid radiologists in diagnosis and guide clinical management.