Gastric cancer is among the most common cancers in the world and it represents the second leading cause of cancer death. In recent years a decrease in incidence was observed in developed countries. However, there are few epidemiological data on gastric cancer in Morocco. The aim of our study is to report our results about epidemiological and evolutionary characteristics of gastric cancer at department of Hépatogastroentérology CHU Hassan II Fez, Morocco.
Materials and methods: We retrospectively analyzed data from all patients with histologically confirmed gastric cancer collected between January, 2001 and May, 2010. We evaluated epidemiological data, endoscopic, histological and evolutionary data of patients. Analysis of the results has been performed with the software Epi-Info.
Results: we collected 331 cases of gastric cancer. This is the second digestive cancer after colorectal cancer in our hospitalizations. The average age of our patients was 55 (22 – 90 years old), the age group <60 years accounted for 63.7%. We noted a male predominance with a sex ratio of 0.6. Smoking was the risk factor most frequently found in 26% of cases. The most common symptom was epigastric pain in 72.4% of cases, an anemic syndrome was found in 40% of our patients. Our patients had consulted within 1 to 6 months in 60.6% of cases with an average hospital stay of 15.5 days for diagnosis. At endoscopy, antral-pyloric location was the most frequent (40%) and appearance ulcerative budding (63.4%) were dominated. In histology, the adenocarcinoma was most frequent (60%). Most of our patients had advanced cancer at diagnosis with 75.6% of cases with liver metastases and peritoneal carcinomatosis. Only 24.7% of our patients had received curative surgery. 23% of our patients died within 6 months after diagnosis.Conclusion:Gastric cancer is the second cancer digestive among our hospitalizations. 63.7% of patients were under 60 years. Our patients consult a late stage where the cancer is very advanced with 75.6% of metastatic cases which reduces the chances of their healings.