[Relapse-Free Survival of over 54 Months after ESD Resection in an Elderly Patient Considered to Have Non-Curative Early Gastric Cancer].

According to the Japanese Gastric Cancer Treatment Guideline(GL), radical surgery is recommended as an additional treatment for early gastric cancer(EGC)patients with endoscopic submucosal dissection(ESD)evaluated as non-curative for fear of lymph node metastasis(LNM). However, the reported probability of LNM was approximately 10%. Therefore, the recommendation might be aggressive for elderly patients or those in poor physical conditions. Under this context, surveillance post non-curative ESD has emerged as an acceptable option. We reported a case of an elderly patient who survived EGC for over 54 months as relapse-free with ESD resection evaluated as non-curative. An 84-year-old woman underwent ESD in July 2014 for EGC, which was deemed as non-curative with negative surgical margins. The patient had pre-existing severe bronchial asthma. Given the age and the comorbidities, the patient preferred close surveillance to radical surgery. After 54 months of surveillance, no recurrence of the initial EGC was found. However, during the annual check-ups, 2 metachronous cancers were found in July 2016 and June 2018 respectively. Both metachronous cancers were curatively resected with ESD.