The formulated growth of early gastric cancer.

Although the proportion of early gastric cancer is rising in the incidence of gastric cancer as a whole, its natural history is still under discussion. We report a patient who was diagnosed with early gastric cancer and who had undergone barium studies once a year for the three previous years. The exact, increasing size of the tumor could be measured at these four time points, and the data show, almost exactly, the line calculated by the formula S = 0.3 t2 [S = size (cm2) of the cancerous lesion, t = time (yr) elapsed from the beginning of the gastric cancer].