Domestic gastric cancer with a higher incidence than in the West, because of this? ...If you have a family history, you need a checkup before the age of 40
Oct 08, 2025
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This is interpreted as an increase in the number of cases of gastric cancer detected early due to the national cancer screening project, and the rate of cure has increased due to the development of treatment techniques day by day. However, about 10% of all gastric cancer patients are still diagnosed with stage 4 gastric cancer, which cannot be cured by surgery at the time of diagnosis.
Early gastric cancer can be cured only with endoscopic resection or surgical treatment, but early detection is important as the survival rate drops sharply if treatment begins only after overlooking the symptoms.
◇There are no specific symptoms in the beginning, and it is difficult to distinguish it from other gastrointestinal diseases
More than 80% of early gastric cancer do not show any special symptoms. About 10% of people feel heartburn, but it is difficult to distinguish it from other gastrointestinal diseases such as gastritis and gastric ulcer, so it is often diagnosed only after cancer has progressed to some extent. Symptoms such as vomiting or becoming easily full and difficult to eat solid food only appear after progression to stage 3 or 4, and by this time, weight is lost, appetite is absent, and tired easily. When cancer bleeds, black stools, hemoptysis, and anemia may appear.
◇Combinant causes such as Helicobacter bacteria and salty eating habits
Gastric cancer is caused by a combination of several factors rather than by any one factor.
Those infected with Helicobacter pylori, classified as carcinogens by the World Health Organization (WHO), are known to be about two to three times more likely to develop gastric cancer than those who do not.
Eating a lot of salty food also affects your diet, and eating a lot of salty food damages your stomach wall and produces nitrate compounds known as carcinogens, exposing your stomach wall to carcinogens and increasing your risk of gastric cancer by up to four times.
In addition, it is known that mutations in normal cells are induced by the actions of heterocyclic amines and benzopyrene produced as food burns, increasing the risk of gastric cancer. Smoking and drinking also increase the risk of gastric cancer by about twice, and people with a family history of gastric cancer double the incidence of gastric cancer than those without a family history, so it is better to pay more attention to cancer screening if you have gastric cancer patients in your family.
◇The incidence rate is twice as high as that of men and women
When analyzed by gender, men have twice as much incidence as women, and women have high incidence of certain cell types of gastric cancer, so female hormones affect the development and progression of gastric cancer. In addition, the higher male smoking rate than women is also considered to affect the difference in incidence.
Gastric cancer has strong regional characteristics, and gastric cancer is more common in East Asia, especially in Korea, than in the West, which is analyzed to be mainly due to adult salt intake (12.5g per day on average) and diet such as Helicobacter infection, which exceeds the World Health Organization's recommended daily salt intake of 5g.
◇Initial treatments can be treated with an endoscope
The stages of gastric cancer are divided into stages 1-4, and each stage is complexly subdivided. If the cancer is confined to the mucosal layer, has good differentiation, no ulcers, and is small within 2cm of the first stage of gastric cancer, which is commonly called early gastric cancer, it can be treated through endoscopic submucosal resection (ESD).
With the exception of patients who can be treated with endoscopic mucosal resection, gastric resection and surrounding lymph node resection are the standard treatments.
Surgery is the most basic treatment for gastric cancer to date, and surgery is performed when gastric cancer does not spread anywhere else and is confined to the local lymph nodes above and around it, that is, within the range that can be removed by surgery.
The goal of gastric cancer surgery includes completely resecting cancer while preserving surrounding organs so that there are no problems with eating and nutrition as much as possible even after resection. Laparoscopic surgery is gradually replacing laparoscopic surgery for gastric cancer treatment. Laparoscopic surgery is characterized by less pain and shorter recovery periods due to small wounds while being able to perform stomach and lymph node resection in the same range as laparoscopic surgery.
Previously, laparoscopic surgery was performed only on early gastric cancer, but recent studies have shown similar survival rates to laparoscopic surgery and excellent effect on early pain control in advanced gastric cancer, so laparoscopic surgery is recognized as a standard surgery. In addition, it is known that the surgical method using robots does not differ significantly in survival rate and is effective in lowering complications.
◇adverse peritoneal metastasis, intraperitoneal and systemic chemotherapy combined
For gastric cancer of stage 2 or higher, chemotherapy is performed if it has spread to lymph nodes far away from the lymph nodes around the stomach, has been disseminated to the peritoneum, or has spread to other organs such as liver, lungs, and bones. Peritoneal metastasis occurs in 40% of stage 4 gastric cancer patients, and the prognosis is so poor that the median survival period is only 2-9 months.
Peritoneal metastasis is caused by cancer cells that penetrate the primary site of the stomach wall or metastatic lymph nodes and are scattered into the abdominal cavity, causing various complications such as digestive and dietary decline, pain, and jaundice.
Professor Seo Won-jun of Gastrointestinal Surgery at Korea University Guro Hospital said, `Even if existing systemic anticancer drugs are used, peritoneal metastatic gastric cancer has limited treatment effects due to low drug concentration in the abdominal cavity, and the quality of life has been severely deteriorated due to various complications such as intestinal obstruction and malignant ascites. As a result, clinical research on 'intra-abdominal chemotherapy', which administers anticancer drugs directly into the abdominal cavity, has been actively conducted recently"According to a recent study conducted by the stomach cancer team at Korea University Guro Hospital, the 6-month progression-free survival rate was 82.6% in the phase 2 study using 'in-abdominal chemotherapy' in combination with 'in-body anticancer drug', showing a 2.7 times better effect than the 6-month progression-free survival rate (30%) of the existing systemic chemotherapy." Currently, several domestic institutions are participating in the phase 3 study led by Korea University Guro Hospital, and the results are expected, and it is an important clinical study waiting for the results internationally.
◇If you have a family history, you should get a checkup before the age of 40
In recent years, many young people have found gastric cancer, and young patients often do not perform endoscopy even if they are not subject to national early screening or are subject to early screening over the age of 40.
Professor Seo Won-jun "Young people often overlook their symptoms, so they are often diagnosed after gastric cancer progresses. It is advisable not to neglect simple abdominal pain or indigestion, and to check the exact cause through endoscopy."
In particular, if you have a family history, it is necessary to perform endoscopy even before the age of 40. If it is detected early in the absence of metastasis through early screening, even if it is a cancer that has occurred in young patients, the possibility of treatment remains high, so if it is detected early and treated quickly, the possibility of cure is also high.
Smoking or the habit of eating salty food increases the likelihood of gastric cancer, so avoid it as much as possible, and people with this habit should get an endoscopy early. In addition, the best prevention method is to eat bland food, eat a lot of vegetables and fruits, and refrain from foods containing burnt food or nitrate compounds, and exercise steadily.
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This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
