Clinicopathological Characteristics and Prognosis of Mucinous Gastric Cancer

Mucinous gastric carcinoma (MGC) has a poor prognosis. Due to the differences in clinicopathology factors between MGC and non-MGC (NMGC), it is difficult to compare them. In this study, we compared the clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of MGC and NMGC patients.For gastric carcinoma (GC), 3,042 gastrectomy patients were included in the study and divided into the MGC (n=86) and NMGC (n=2,956) groups. The characteristics and prognoses of patients in both groups were compared before and after (both groups, n=86) propensity score matching.Significant differences were observed in the tumor location (upper) (MGC group: 28.0% vs. NMGC group: 24.7%, p=0.003), tumor diameter (median) [65 mm (8-200 mm) vs. 40 mm (2-75 mm), p<0.001], lymph node metastasis (70.9% vs. 37.3%, p<0.001), venous invasion (57.0% vs. 40.4%, p<0.001), and lymphatic invasion (62.8% vs. 34.9%, p<0.001) before propensity score matching. The 5-year overall survival (OS) (70.9% vs. 76.2%, p=0.006) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) (75.5% vs. 82.4%, p=0.014) rates were significantly lower in the MGC group. After propensity score matching, there were no significant differences in either the 5-year OS (70.9% vs. 73.7%, p=0.230) or CSS (75.5% vs. 75.7%, p=0.587) rates. In addition, no substantial difference was observed in either of the recurrence forms.MGC is rare and usually diagnosed at a more advanced stage. However, MGC and NMGC have similar prognoses.