Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Jan 15, 2019; 11(1): 28-38
Published online Jan 15, 2019. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v11.i1.28
Impact of time from diagnosis to chemotherapy in advanced gastric cancer: A Propensity Score Matching Study to Balance Prognostic Factors
Tsutomu Nishida, Aya Sugimoto, Ryo Tomita, Yu Higaki, Naoto Osugi, Kei Takahashi, Kaori Mukai, Tokuhiro Matsubara, Dai Nakamatsu, Shiro Hayashi, Masashi Yamamoto, Sachiko Nakajima, Koji Fukui, Masami Inada
Tsutomu Nishida, Aya Sugimoto, Ryo Tomita, Yu Higaki, Naoto Osugi, Kei Takahashi, Kaori Mukai, Tokuhiro Matsubara, Dai Nakamatsu, Shiro Hayashi, Masashi Yamamoto, Sachiko Nakajima, Koji Fukui, Masami Inada, Department of Gastroenterology, Toyonaka Municipal Hospital, Osaka 560-8565, Japan
Author contributions: Nishida T analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript; Nishida T and Sugimoto A collected the data; Nishida T, Sugimoto A, Tomita R, Higaki Y, Osugi N, Takahashi K, Mukai K, Matsubara, Nakamatsu D, Hayashi S, Yamamoto M, Nakajima S, Fukui K and Inada M provided medical care for the patients enrolled in this study.
Institutional review board statement: The present study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the Toyonaka Municipal Hospital (2018-06-06).
Informed consent statement: This is a retrospective study involving human data that was previously collected and did not require the additional recruitment of human subjects; thus, the need for informed consent was waived via the opt-out method of our hospital website.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Tsutomu Nishida, MD, PhD, Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, Toyonaka Municipal Hospital, 4-14-1 Shibahara, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-8565, Japan. tnishida.gastro@gmail.com
Telephone: +81-6-68430101 Fax: +81-6-68583531
Received: September 18, 2018
Peer-review started: September 18, 2018
First decision: October 15, 2018
Revised: November 21, 2018
Accepted: December 17, 2018
Article in press: December 18, 2018
Published online: January 15, 2019
Processing time: 119 Days and 10.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Generally, most patients with advanced cancer have various additional conditions that are due to the advanced cancer, unlike patients who are candidates for surgery. It is currently unclear whether a delay in the initiation of chemotherapy in patients with advanced gastric cancer (A-GC) leads to adverse outcomes. In the present study, we evaluated the impact of treatment delay on clinical outcomes in patients with A-GC. Using propensity score matched analysis to minimize potential selection bias, we found that there was no significant difference in overall survival between patients in the early waiting time (WT) and elective WT groups. A longer WT in patients with A-GC does not appear to be associated with a worse prognosis.