Screening and minimally invasive treatment for gastric cancer are important challenges in elderly patients

Excerpt

The aging of the population in Japan outweighs that in all other countries, with Japan having the highest proportion of elderly people. The average life expectancy of men ranks second behind that of Iceland and the average life expectancy of women is the highest in the world. In 2006, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced that the number of elderly Japanese people over 80 years old was about 6,700,000. The ratio of people 80 years or older to the total population in Japan recently overtook the ratios in Italy and Sweden to become the highest in the world. Therefore, Japanese are among the longest-living ethnic groups in the world, but they do not live forever. Human beings die of disease but they don’t die of getting old. Cancer, heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and pneumonia are the top four causes of death in elderly people in Japan. In 2006, the Japanese Cancer Registry [1] estimated that the number of people over 80 years old affected by gastric cancer was 26,121 (Table 1). The Cancer Registry estimated that the numbers of patients affected by malignant disease in the generation of people over 80 years old were: 23,585 with large-bowel cancer, 23,423 with lung cancer, 8,689 with liver cancer, 8,191 with gallbladder and bile duct cancers, 7,679 with pancreatic cancer, 5,119 with cancer of the urinary bladder, and 4,008 with malignant lymphoma. …