Improving trends in survival of patients who receive chemotherapy for metastatic or recurrent gastric cancer: 12 years of experience at a single institution

The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the changes in clinical features and treatment outcomes of the patients with metastatic or recurrent gastric cancer (MRGC) treated in the past 12 years.

A total of 3888 patients who received chemotherapy for MRGC between January 2000 and December 2011 were analyzed via a prospectively collected registry. The analysis focused on the comparison among three periods: 2000–2003 (period 1), 2004–2007 (period 2) and 2008–2011 (period 3).

There were 880 patients (23 %) in period 1, 1573 (40 %) in period 2 and 1435 (37 %) in period 3. The most commonly used first-line chemotherapy regimen was fluoropyrimidine with/without platinum (72 %) for all periods. The use of second- and third-line chemotherapy was slightly but significantly more common in the two recent periods: 46 and 19 % in period 1, 54 and 26 % in period 2, and 53 and 27 % in period 3, respectively. Overall, 3494 patients (89.9 %) died with a median overall survival (OS) of 10.6 months (95 % CI 10.2–11.0). The OS was statistically significantly improved over the study period: 9.6 months (95 % CI 9.0–10.2) in period 1, 10.3 months (95 % CI 9.8–10.9) in period 2 and 11.7 months (95 % CI 11.0–12.4) in period 3 (p for trend <0.001). Multivariate analysis including eight prognostic factors (performance, gastrectomy, peritoneal/bone/lung metastasis, abnormal alkaline phosphatase/albumin/total bilirubin) showed that the more recent treatment period was an independent favorable prognostic factor for OS (p < 0.001).

The OS of patients who receive chemotherapy for MRGC has been shown to improve over time.