Estimated survival time in gastric cancer patients and its associated factors

Gastric cancer is the second most common cancer after lung cancer and the leading cause of cancer mortality. Gastric cancer of the lining of the stomach gradually affects the adjacent layers of stomach and spreads out. With studying the characteristics of these patients and determining factors in predicting affecting survival, it may be possible to predict or to improve their survival. In this study, 199 patients with metastatic gastric cancer were studied and the age at the time of diagnosis, type of treatment, degree of tumor differentiation, the number of sites involved and many other factors affecting the length of survival time of patients were evaluated. For data analysis, Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazards model were used. 151 patients (75.9%) were male and 71 patients (35.7%) died in the end of follow-up. The mean and median survival time of patients was 24.7±3.9 and 19 months, respectively. Survival probability of one, three and five year of patients were 0.66, 0.19 and 0.06, respectively. Fitted model showed that age at diagnosis and level of hemoglobin associated with survival in patients with metastatic gastric cancers (P<0.05). With early diagnosis in patients with gastric cancer, risk can be greatly reduced.