Lymph node metastasis as a single predictor in patients with Borrmann type I gastric cancer.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Borrmann type I gastric cancers are rare. Its clinicopathological features have never been reported.

METHODOLOGY: A total of 33 patients with Borrmann type I gastric cancer was evaluated. 570 patients with Borrmann type II, III and IV were used as references.

RESULTS: Borrmann type I gastric cancer occurred preferably in upper stomach, and had more T1 and T2 cancer invasion and early TNM stages, but less lymph node metastasis. Histologically, it had more intestinal type and less scirrhous stromal reaction. Five-year disease-free and overall survival rates in patients with Borrmann type I tumors were significantly higher than that of other types (73.3% vs. 45.8%; P = 0.02, and 72.6% vs. 47.8%; P = 0.01, respectively). Analysis of the relation between clinicopathological factors and survival showed that only lymph node metastasis significantly affected on disease-free survival with a relative risk of 8.4. Lymph node metastasis also affected overall survival rate at a marginal level (p = 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Borrmann type I gastric cancer has higher survival rate. Lymph node metastasis is a single prognostic indicator for survival.