National guidelines for gastric cancer: redundant or needed?

In response to Professor Kodera’s Editorial on the publication of the German, the Austrian and the Swiss Societies for Hematology and Medical Oncology [1] we would like to address a few points. Gastric cancer is a common malignant disease although the age-standardized incidence has been steadily decreasing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland over the past decades. Annually, approximately 9500 new cases of gastric cancer are diagnosed in men and approximately 6000 new cases in women in Germany. This makes gastric cancer the tenth most common cancer in men, accounting for about 3.5% of all malignant tumor cases, and the ninth most common cancer in women, accounting for about 2.4%. In terms of cancer-related mortality, the relevance of gastric cancer is even higher. Gastric cancer accounts for about 3.5% of all cancer deaths in women and 4.2% in men [2]. …