Decisions for extent of gastric surgery in gastric cancer patients: younger patients require more attention than the elderly.

Background And Objectives: There is a prevailing belief that young patients with gastric adenocarcinomas have a more aggressive disease.

Methods: We reviewed the prospectively collected database of 753 gastric adenocarcinomas patients who had undergone curative gastrectomy. Clinicopathological factors and the survival rates for each pathological TNM stage were compared between patients younger than 40 years of age and the others.