Short-and long-term outcomes of one-stage versus two-stage gastrectomy for perforated gastric cancer: a multicenter retrospective propensity score-matched study.

Objective: There is no scientific consensus about the treatment of perforated gastric cancer (PGC). Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate which is the better treatment option for PGC between the single-stage and two-stage strategies.

Methods: All 81 PGC patients from 13 medical institutions were retrospectively enrolled in this study. The PGC patients who underwent R0 gastrectomy were divided into one-stage surgery and two-stage surgery groups. The clinicopathological characteristics of the two groups were compared, and 415 regular gastric cancer patients without perforation were randomly selected as a control. The propensity score matching (PSM) method was used to find matched regular GC patients with similar clinicopathological parameters. The OS (overall survival) and the number harvested lymph nodes from PGC patients and regular GC patients were compared.

Results: Compared with PGC patients who underwent one-stage surgery, those who underwent two-stage surgery harvested significantly more lymph nodes [31(27, 38) vs 17 (12, 24), P < 0.001], required less blood transfusion [0 (0, 100) vs 200 (0, 800), P = 0.034], had a shorter ICU stay [0 (0, 1.5) vs 3 (0, 3), P = 0.009], and had a significantly better OS (Median OS: 45 months vs 11 months, P = 0.007). Compared with propensity score-matched regular GC patients without perforation, PGC patients who underwent one-stage gastrectomy had a poorer quality of lymphadenectomy [17 (12, 24) vs 29 (21, 37), P < 0.001] and suffered a worse OS (Median OS: 18 months vs 30 months, P = 0.024). Conversely, two-stage gastrectomy can achieve a comparable quality of lymphadenectomy (P = 0.506) and a similar OS (P = 0.096) compared to propensity score-matched regular GC patients.

Conclusions: For PGC patients in poor condition, two-stage treatment is a better option when D2 radical gastrectomy cannot be achieved in emergency surgery, based on our findings that two-stage gastrectomy could provide PGC patients with a better quality of lymphadenectomy and a better OS.