BRAZILIAN GASTRIC CANCER ASSOCIATION GUIDELINES (PART 1): AN UPDATE ON DIAGNOSIS, STAGING, ENDOSCOPIC TREATMENT AND FOLLOW-UP.

Background: The II Brazilian Consensus on Gastric Cancer by the Brazilian Gastric Cancer Association (ABCG) was recently published. On this occasion, several experts in gastric cancer expressed their opinion before the statements presented.

Aim: To present the ABCG Guidelines (part 1) regarding the diagnosis, staging, endoscopic treatment and follow-up of gastric cancer patients.

Methods: To forge these Guidelines, the authors carried out an extensive and current review regarding each statement present in the II Consensus, using the Medline/PubMed, Cochrane Library and SciELO databases with the following descriptors: gastric cancer, staging, endoscopic treatment and follow-up. In addition, each statement was classified according to the level of evidence and degree of recommendation.

Results: Of the 24 statements, two (8.3%) were classified with level of evidence A, 11 (45.8%) with B and 11 (45.8%) with C. As for the degree of recommendation, six (25%) statements obtained grade of recommendation 1, nine (37.5%) recommendation 2a, six (25%) 2b and three (12.5%) grade 3.

Conclusion: The guidelines presented here are intended to assist professionals working in the fight against gastric cancer with relevant and current information, granting them to be applied in the daily medical practice.