Prediction of Time to Recurrence and Influencing Factors for Gastric Cancer in Iran

Background: The patterns of gastric cancer recurrence vary across societies. We designed the current studyin an attempt to evaluate and reveal the outbreak of the recurrence patterns of gastric cancer and also predictionof time to recurrence and its effected factors in Iran. Materials and
Methods: This research was performed fromMarch 2003 to February 2007. Demographic characteristics, clinical and pathological diagnosis and classificationincluding pathologic stage, tumor grade, tumor site and tumor size in of patients with GC recurrent werecollected from patients’ data files. To evaluate of factors affected on the relapse of the GC patients, gender, ageat diagnosis, treatment type and Hgb were included in the research. Data were analyzed using Kaplan-Meierand logistic regression models.
Results: After treatment, 82 patients suffered recurrence, 42, 33 and 17 by theends of first, second and third years. The mean ( SD) and median ( IQR) time to recurrence in patients withGC were 25.5 (20.6-30.1) and 21.5 (15.6-27.1) months, respectively. The results of multivariate analysis logisticregression showed that only pathologic stage, tumor grade and tumor site significantly affected the recurrence.
Conclusions: We found that pathologic stage, tumor grade and tumor site significantly affect on the recurrenceof GC which has a high positive prognostic value and might be functional for better follow-up and selecting thepatients at risk. We also showed time to recurrence to be an important factor for follow-up of patients.