Epidemiology and Treatment of Gastric Cancer

According to recent statistics, the incidence and mortality from gastric cancer are both worldwide in fifth place in terms of ranking. Gastric cancer is more common in males than in females. This difference in the incidence between males and females is likely due to the difference in exposure to some risk factors like Helicobacter pylori infection, family history of gastric cancer, dietary habits, smoking and alcohol. However these factors do not completely explain the different characteristics of gastric cancer between the sexes. Some studies have concluded that exposure to estrogen could reduce the risk of gastric cancer.

There is a lack of current population based and real world data on sex and age differences in gastric cancer care. Analyses of sex differences are primarily originate from Asia or focusing on older cohorts. In the Netherlands, Kalff et al. conducted a study with patients with gastric adenocarcinoma (n=2 072) registered in the Dutch Upper GI Cancer Audit between 2011 and 2016. In this study, patients without metastatic gastric cancer and with an elective surgery were included.

To close this sex and age data gap for patients including those with UICC IV stage and without surgery, the aim of our study was to analyze the sex and age differences in clinicopathological features and staging in gastric adenocarcinoma with cancer registry data from the Federal State of Brandenburg from 2000 to 2020.