ARTICLE Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Completely Resected Gastric Cancer: A Randomized Phase III Trial Conducted by GOIRC

Despite its declining incidence, gastric cancer remains a worldwide health problem that accounts for 10 % of all new cancer diagnoses and 12 % of all cancer-related deaths ( 1). Diagnosis of gastric can-cer is often made when the disease is advanced and unresectable, which contributes to the high rate of morbidity and mortality. Complete gastric surgical resection with dissection of lymph nodes adjacent to the tumor or more extensive dissection (D 1 – D 4) is the only potentially curative treatment for patients with gastric cancer in stages I – III ( 2). For the two-thirds of patients diagnosed as hav-ing stage II or III gastric cancer, the 5-year survival rate is only 16 % ( 3). Several randomized clinical trials have investigated whether adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without radio-therapy can reduce the rate of recurrence and increase the rat