The Role of Metastatic Lymph Node Ratio in Gastric Cancer

Introduction: Lymph node metastases at the gastric cancer is the one of the important prognostic risk factors. In this study, we evaluate the prognostic importance of the Metastatic Lymph Node Ratio in the gastric cancer cases.

Methods and Technique: In this study, we included 56 gastric adenocarcinoma patient who had curative surgery and evaluated retrospectively. Forty one of them were male (%73.2) and fifteen (%26.7) were female. Statistical analysis of the results of this study was done by using SPSS 17 for Windows. Survey analysis was calculated with Kaplan-Meier test and the multivariant analysis was calculated with Cox proportional hazard model.

Results: In our study the factors that effect the survey were the ratio of number of the metastatic lymph node and the dissected total lymph node (MLR-Metastatic Lymph Node Ratio), stage, number of the not involved lymph nodes, the diameter of tumor and differentiation of the tumor. The multivariant analysis showed that stage and the MLR were the independent prognostic factors.

Conclusion: MLO based staging is a simple, effective, and reproducible method for the evaluating the prognosis of the gastric cancer patients who had curative surgery and had involved lymph nodes.