A Registry Program for Familial Gastric Cancer Patients Referred to Cancer Institute of Iran

Background: Gastric cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death. It has a poor prognosis withonly 5-10% of hereditary etiology. If it is diagnosed, it could be helpful for screening the other susceptible membersof a family for preventive procedures. Usually it is identified by symptoms such as presence of cancer in differentmembers of family, some special type of pathology such as diffused adenocarcinoma, having younger age andmultiple cancer syndromes. Hence, designing a registry program can be a more practical way to screen highrisk families for a preventive program. Materials and
Methods: Based on the inclusion criteria, a questionnairewas prepared. After pilot on a small number of patients, the actual data was collected from 197 patients andprocessed in SPSS 16.0.
Results: Totally, 11.8% of the patients were younger than 45 years old. Blood type ‘A’ wasdominant and males had a higher risk behavior with higher consumption of unhealthy food. Adenocarcinomawas reported in majority of cases. 21.8% of the patients had the including criteria for familial gastric cancer(FGC).
Conclusions: The high percentage of FGC population compared to the other studies have revealed a needto design an infrastructural diagnostic protocol and screening program for patients with FGC, plus preventiveprogram for family members at risk which could be done by a precise survey related to frequency and foundermutations of FGC in a national registry program.