Association between the National Cancer Screening Programme (NSCP) for gastric cancer and oesophageal cancer mortality

Background: The aim was to evaluate whether this gastric cancer-screening programme was effective in reducing oesophageal cancer mortality. Methods: A population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted using the Korean National Cancer Screening Programme (NCSP) database. The study cohort comprised 16,969 oesophageal cancer patients who had been diagnosed in 2007-2014. We analysed the association between the history of NSCP for gastric cancer and oesophageal cancer mortality. Results: Compared with never-screened subjects, ever-screened subjects had an overall HR for oesophageal cancer mortality of 0.647 (95% CI, 0.617-0.679). According to the time interval since screening, the HRs of death were 0.731 (95% CI, 0.667-0.801) for 6-11 months, 0.635 (95% CI, 0.594-0.679) for 12-23 months, 0.564 (95% CI, 0.522-0.610) for 24-35 months and 0.742 (95% CI, 0.679-0.810) for ≥36 months. According to the last screening modality, the HRs of death were 0.497 (95% CI, 0.464-0.531) for upper endoscopy, and 0.792 (95% CI, 0.749-0.838) for UGIS. Upper endoscopy reduced the mortality consistently in all age groups over 50 years, whereas UGIS could not. Conclusion: The NCSP for gastric cancer was effective in reducing the mortality of oesophageal cancer, and upper endoscopy was superior to UGIS.ope