Purpose: The present study investigated the prognostic significance of tumor size in gastric carcinoma patients.
Methods: Nine hundred seventy-three gastric carcinoma patients who underwent curative gastrectomy were included and hospital records were reviewed to determine the relationship between tumor size and survival.
Results: First, the patients were divided based on the mean value of the tumor size in respective stages to control selection bias. Only in stages I and III was tumor size a significant independent prognostic factor. Second, we analyzed the appropriate cutoff value for the large tumor. The minimum criterion for a large tumor, which was determined by the receiver-operating characteristic curve for cancer-related death, was 3.5 cm. There were significant differences between patients with large and small tumors with respect to depth of invasion, number of lymph node metastasis, and stage of disease.
Conclusions: Tumor size serves as an indicator of prognosis in gastric cancer patients and a tumor size of 3.5 cm can be used as a significant lower limit of standard size criterion.