Real-World Experience of Clinical Outcomes of Microscopic Margin Positivity After Radical Gastrectomy from a Tertiary Cancer Center in Northeast India.

Abstract

Surgical resection for gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC) remains the only potentially curative treatment, and the use of neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy improves survival in patients with advanced gastric cancer. Margin-positive resection is a known poor prognostic factor. A retrospective observational study of patients undergoing radical gastrectomy of any type for GAC was done at a tertiary care cancer center in Northeast India. The study included patients who were operated on from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2021 (5 years), and they were followed up to 31 March 2024. A total of 172 patients underwent gastrectomy of any type for GAC during the study period of which 13 patients were found to have microscopic positive (R1) histopathological margin (7.6%). The median age of the patients with positive margins was 48 years (range 27 to 69 years). The male-to-female ratio was 9:4. Ten patients (77%) had poorly differentiated or signet-ring cell carcinoma. The distal margin was the most frequent margin which was positive (84.6%). Neoadjuvant chemotherapy was used in only 23.1% patients. At the end of our study period, only 1 patient out of 13 patients was alive. Median disease-free survival (DFS) was 16.2 months (95% confidence interval 1.2 to 31.1 months). Median overall survival (OS) was 20.2 months (95% confidence interval 9.3 to 31.2 months). Patients who have microscopic positive margins after gastrectomy are found to have a high incidence of poorly differentiated or signet-ring cell carcinoma.