Clinicopathology and prognosis of mucinous gastric carcinoma

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Mucinous gastric carcinoma (MGC) is a rare histopathological type of gastric carcinoma, for which the clinicopathological features and prognosis remain controversial. To clarify the clinical significance of mucinous histological type in gastric cancer, we studied clinicopathological characteristics of MGC tumors and prognosis of patients. METHODOLOGY: Forty-one patients with MGC and 1,407 patients with non-mucinous gastric carcinoma (NGC) were included in the study. Tumors were evaluated against patient gender and age, tumor location, size, and macroscopic type, depth of gastric wall invasion, lymph node metastasis, liver metastasis, peritoneal dissemination, distant metastasis, stage, and operative curability. RESULTS: Compared with NGC tumors, MGC tumors were larger, showed more serosal invasion, were associated with a higher incidence of lymph node metastasis, and peritoneal dissemination, and tended to be at a more advanced stage. However, multivariate analysis demonstrated that the mucinous histological type was neither an independent prognostic factor nor an independent risk factor for lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric cancer. CONCLUSIONS: The mucinous histological type had no influence on patient outcome or the frequency of lymph node metastasis. MGC tumors are therefore biologically similar to those in NGC.