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Prognostic impact of lymph node metastasis along the left gastric artery in gastric cancer.

BACKGROUND/AIMS
This present study investigated a prognostic impact of the lymph nodes along left gastric artery metastases in gastric cancer patients.


METHODOLOGY
In this study we analyzed 189 patients with N1 and N2 (Japanese Classification for Gastric Cancer: JCGC) metastasis. The N2 patients were divided into two subgroups; patients with N1 + metastases along left gastric artery (No.7) (only No.7-positive N2), and the remaining N2 patients (Remaining N2). We compared the clinicopathological factors and prognoses among these patient groups.


RESULTS
Patients in the Only No.7-positive N2 subgroup showed a better survival curve than the Remaining N2 subgroup although the difference was not significant. In TNM-N1 (six or less), the survival curves of Only No.7-positive N2 were better than those of Remaining N2. However, the Only No.7-positive N2 and Remaining N2 subgroups both showed similar survival outcomes for TNM-N2 (seven or more).


CONCLUSIONS
The prognostic impact of lymph node metastases along the left gastric artery was found to be rather close to JCGC N1 (peri-gastric nodes) than JCGC N2 in patients with gastric cancers, especially in cases in which the total number of positive lymph nodes was six or less.