Robotic gastrectomy for the treatment of gastric cancer is a feasible and safe procedure in the hands of experienced laparoscopic surgeons. Robotic gastrectomy offers better short-term surgical outcomes than the open and laparoscopic methods. Furthermore, this procedure may be a preferable alternative for the treatment of gastric cancer.

Based on operative time analysis, this study show that experience of 50 cases of LADG with systemic lymphadenectomy for early gastric cancer is required to achieve optimum proficiency.

Our data confirmed that LADG with extraperigastric (no. 7, 8, and 9) lymph node dissection proved to be feasible and acceptable surgical technique for early gastric cancer. At least taking a surgical point of view, LADG with extraperigastric lymph node dissection is suggested to be a preferred surgical option for patients with early gastric cancer. Its oncologic validity awaits larger and prospective multicenter trials.

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Tumor angiogenesis has proved to be a useful prognostic determinant for patients with various solid tumors. In this study, we investigated the quantitative expression of angiogenesis in colorectal carcinoma to determine how angiogenesis correlates with clinicopathologic factors and prognosis. One hundred twenty-seven specimens resected from patients with primary colorectal carcinoma were investigated immunohistochemically using a polyclonal antibody against factor-VIII-related antigen, and areas with the highest vascular density at the invasive tumor margin were counted at 200 times magnification. The microvessel count, defined as angiogenesis density (AD), became significantly higher with increase in histologic grade (p = 0.02) and Dukes stage (p = 0.001). AD was also significantly higher in patients with lymph node metastasis (p = 0.005), lymphatic invasion (p = 0.042), vascular invasion (p < 0.001), and liver metastasis (p = 0.0004) than in those without. In addition, patients with synchronous distant hematogenous metastasis in stage D disease showed significantly higher AD than patients with nonhematogenous metastasis (p = 0.006). When 27 cases of disease recurrence after surgical resection with curative intent were stratified according to mode of spread, AD in cases with a hematogenous pattern of relapse proved to be significantly higher than in cases with nonhematogenous spread (p < 0.001). No significant differences were, however, found in AD when they were subdivided as to operative nodal status (p = 0.39 and 0.08 in the node-negative and the node-positive group, respectively). Multivariate analysis indicated that AD was an independent prognostic factor (p = 0.0004) in colorectal carcinoma. Quantitative evaluation of tumor angiogenesis at the invasive tumor margin is suggested to be a good prognostic indicator and a useful predictor for hematogenous spread and recurrence in patients with colorectal carcinoma.

Low-risk elderly patients fare as well as younger patients after liver transplantation. However, unless results can be improved, high-risk patients older than 60 years should probably not undergo liver transplantation.

SLN biopsy using a radioisotope in patients with gastric cancer is a technically feasible and accurate technique, and it is a minimally invasive approach in the assessment of patient nodal status.

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