WIDE PREVALENCE OF INTEREST in early gastric cancer has contributed to a considerable rise in the number of cases in both Japan and Western countries.'-5 The prognosis after surgery for early gastric cancer is generally favorable, and the 5-year survival rate reported in the literature from Japan exceeds 90%'. 6-8 Although early gastric cancer is potentially curable by surgery, there are cases of a recurrence after curative resection. We reviewed our experience with early gastric cancer during a 24-year period and evaluated the following: (1) incidence and patterns of recurrence, (2) characteristic findings in the recurrent cases related to the clinicopathologic nature or surgical procedures, and (3) possibility of further improvement in the prognosis of early gastric cancer.

The limited presence of EBV-infected cells in the diseased areas of IBD colonic specimens indicated that EBV infection may be related to such diseases.

One hundred seventy-nine primary human gastric tumors not associated with early cancer or noncurative resection were examined immunohistochemically for the expression of c-erbB-2 protein. Positive staining, regarded as an indication of gene amplification, was evident in 22(12%) of the tumors. Of various clinicopathological factors considered, a statistically significant difference in association with frequency of expression was noted only for histological differentiation, as follows: 39% positive staining in papillary, 17% in well differentiated, 5% in moderately differentiated, and 4% in undifferentiated adenocarcinomas (P greater than 0.01). The 5-year survival rates of patients with positive and negative c-erbB-2 staining were 57% and 59%, respectively. These findings indicate that, in the case of human gastric adenocarcinoma, expression of c-erbB-2 protein is correlated with tumor histological differentiation. Our results also suggest that the presence or absence of c-erbB-2 protein may not serve as a prognostic indicator, particularly in cases of adenocarcinoma of the stomach.

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