Survival of Gastric Cancer Patients at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Eastern India: A Retrospective Data Analysis

Abstract

BackgroundGastric cancer is one of the most common cancers and a leading cause of death worldwide. Most cases of gastric cancer are diagnosed at an advanced stage when no definitive treatment is available leading to an overall declined survival rate. In this study, we aimed to investigate the survival rate of gastric cancer patients admitted to our tertiary care center and determined the relationship between sociodemographic and clinicopathological characteristics with mortality. MethodologyGastric cancer patients treated between January 2019 and December 2020 were included in this retrospective study. The clinicopathological and demographic data of 275 gastric cancer patients were analyzed. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to calculate the overall survival of gastric cancer patients. The Kaplan-Meier log-rank test was used to calculate the difference. ResultsThe mean survival of gastric cancer patients was 20.10 months (95% confidence interval = 19.20-21.03). Deaths were higher among stage III (42.6%) and stage IV (36.1%) patients compared to stage I (1.6%) and stage II (19.7%) patients. Mortality was significantly higher (70.5%) in patients without surgery. ConclusionsThe mean survival in our study setting is lower and is associated with the pathological stage of the disease, surgical intervention, and patients presenting with other gastrointestinal symptoms. A lower survival rate can be attributed to late diagnosis.