"Conservative surgery is performed for patients with early gastric
cancer, according to the guideline proposed from Japanese Gastric Cancer
Society. There are many kinds of operations, such as ordinary open
surgery, laparoscopic-assisted gastrectomy, laparoscopic intragastric surgery,
pyrolus preserving gastrectomy, hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery.
Indications of the operations are various, but it is necessary to have standard
indication for each procedure. Standard operation for advanced gastric
cancer in Japan is D2 gastrectomy. Surgeons in Eastern world believed that
D1 + alpha or D1 + adjuvant radio-chemotherapy are the standard treatments,
because of high incidence of mortality and morbidity after D2 dissection.
In Japan, D4 dissection has been performed for patients with nodal involvement,
and the validity of D4 dissection is now studied by two randomized trials.
Combined resection for T4 tumor is believed to be mandatory.However, the
validity of pancreato-splenectomy to yield a complete clearance of No. 10 or
No. 11 lymph node station is in controversial, because of high incidence
of the postoperative development of pancreatic fistula, anastomotic
insufficiency and abscess. There was no prospective study to confirm the
effect of omentectomy. Patients with advanced gastric cancer showing a
serosal invasion-diameter less than 2.5 cm have less risk of peritoneal
recurrence. It may be valuable to perform randomized controlled study
consisting of omentum-preserving gastrectomy and gastrectomy with
omentectomy. Prognosis of patients with peritoneal dissemination was
improved by intraperitoneal chomo hyporthormia and peritonectomy, and
prospective studies should be done to compare the effects of systemic
chemotherapy and regional chemotherapy combined with peritonectomy.
Furthermore, effects of neoadjuvant chemotherapy with cytoreduction with R0
resection should be confirmed by prospective studies."