The role of hepatectomy in the management of metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma: a systematic review

Background: Gastric cancer has a high mortality, with many patients presenting with advanced disease. Many patients who undergo curative gastrectomy will subsequently develop metastatic disease. Hepatectomy has an established place in treating metastases from a variety of cancers but its role in gastric cancer is not clear. This review sought to systematically appraise the literature to establish the role of hepatectomy in treating gastric cancer metastases.

Method: Medline and EMBASE were searched for all papers publishing data on survival of patients with metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma who underwent hepatectomy.

Results: Seventeen studies with 438 patients were included. There were no randomised controlled trials. Perioperative mortality was 2%, with morbidity between 17 and 60%. Patients with solitary metastases appeared to have better survival. Other favourable survival characteristics included unilobar disease, and metachronous presentation. No advantage was demonstrated with either adjuvant or neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Discussion: Few patients with hepatic metastases from gastric cancer are suitable for hepatectomy, but for those suitable there appears to be survival benefit. Patients with synchronous, multiple or bilobar metastases have worse survival.

Conclusion: The evidence supporting the role of hepatectomy in the treatment of hepatic metastases from gastric cancer is weak. However in a selected group there appears to be a survival advantage; patients with solitary metastases had better survival outcomes than those with multiple metastases and metachronous presentation was associated with a better prognosis than synchronous presentation. Hepatectomy should be considered in these patients in the setting of a randomised trial.