The relation between postoperative surgical complications and gastric cancer survival

Gastric cancer had 951,600 new cancer cases and 723,100 deaths occurred in 2012. Complete resection is essential for the cure of localized gastric cancer. At present, the standard treatments for locally advanced gastric cancer in Asia, Europe and the United States are D2 gastrectomy followed by adjuvant chemotherapy, surgery with preand postoperative chemotherapy, and surgery with postoperative chemoradiotherapy, respectively. Although complete resection is essential for the cure of gastric cancer, the incidence of postoperative complications rate after gastric cancer surgery has been reported to be 20-30%. Recent studies for gastrointestinal cancers have demonstrated that the development of postoperative complications decreased the patient’s survival or increased the risk of disease recurrence . The aim of the present study was to determine whether the overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) would be affected by the development of any postoperative complications in the patients who underwent curative resection for gastric cancer.