Abstract

This study was designed to investigate to incidence of histopathologlcal type of stomach cancer by WHO classification among Koreans. Total 831 cases of gastric carcinoma were evaluated and the possible relationship of each histopathological type with age, sex, degree of invasion and metastasis, etc. was analysed. The results obtained were as follows. 1) The overall incidence of gastric carcinoma was 4.5% among total biopsy specimens, which was seemed to be increased annually. 2) Histologically, adenocarcinoma was most common type (73.1%) and undifferentiatecl carcinoma was next in order of frequency (25.6%). Among the cases of adenocarcinoma, incidence of subclassified type was as follows in order of frequency; tubular type(50.3%), mucinous type(10.2%), signet ring cell type(9.6%) and papillary type (2.4%). 3) Male to female ratio for gastric carcinoma was 2.14 : 1. 4) The mean age of gastric carcinoma patients was 52.4 years, which was 53.7% years in male and 49.7 years in female. 5) Compared to other histopathological types, signet ring cell carcinoma, mucinous carcinoma and undifferentiated carcinoma were more frequently observed in female, of which mean age was lesser than of other types. 6) Incidence of early cancer was only 8.8% among 419 gastrectomized cases. Serosal involvements were, however, occurred in 39.6% of all gastrectomized cases and this high degree of invasion was more frequently observed in signet ring cell carcinoma, mucinous carcinoma and undifferentiated carcinoma. 7) Incidence of metastasis in gastric carcinoma was 72.9% among 218 specimens. However, there was no appreciable correlation between frequency of metastasis and histological types. 8) Combination of one major histological type with other minor ones was shown in 31.3% of gastric carcinomas. But, the interrelationship between histological types in combined patterns was not correlated each other and randomly distributed.