Ten-year survival of curability B gastric cancer patients treated by tegafur-uracil as postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy in a common public hospital: univariate and multivariate analyses.

PURPOSE The prognosis of gastric cancer patients undergoing curability B surgery was retrospectively examined to determine the effectiveness of the administration of oral anti-cancer drugs as postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. METHODS This study was based on the outcomes of 86 potentially curative patients who had undergone curability B resection of gastric cancer with or without the subsequent administration of oral 5-fluorouracil analogue. There were 21 patients who underwent surgery alone with no oral anti-cancer agents (group A) and 65 patients who were treated postoperatively, mainly with UFT (Tegafur and uracil; group B). This study compared the ten-year survival times of these two groups using univariate and multivariate analyses. RESULTS The amount of UFT in group B was 354.2 +/- 122.0 mg and the administration period was 11.7 +/- 7.2 months. The backgrounds showed significantly more older patients in group A compared than group B (P = 0.0002). A univariate analysis showed the ten-year survival rate in group B to be higher than group A (P = 0.0079). A multivariate analysis showed that the postoperative administration of UFT was an independent factor associated with prolongation of survival times as well as the extent of lymph nodes metastasis and pathological stage (P = 0.0096). CONCLUSION This study provided conventional evidence that postoperative administration of oral 5-fluorouracil analogue is associated with better long-term prognoses in patients undergoing curability B resection for gastric carcinoma.