We evaluated the efficacy of gastrojejunostomy for advanced gastric cancer patients with peritoneal dissemination.
Patients and methods: We evaluated the clinical outcome of 11 patients (average age 73.5 years for 8 men) who received gastrojejunostomy for gastric outlet obstruction caused by advanced gastric cancer with peritoneal dissemination between October 2003 and December 2008. We performed stomach-partitioning gastrojejunistomy with tube jejunostomy.
Results: Three patients with performance status 3 and severe peritoneal dissemination deteriorated during the early postoperative days and were transferred to terminal care. These three patients died after 23, 26 and 60 days. The other 8 patients were discharged from hospital between 10 and 35 days postoperatively (median hospital stay 16 days) and received chemotherapy with S-1 on an outpatient basis. All patients died within one year except the one who showed a partial response to chemotherapy and lived for 40 months (MST: 8 months in all patients).
Discussion: It seemed that there was little adaptation to gastrogejunostomy as palliation surgery for patients with poor performance status (PS 3) and severe peritoneal dissemination.