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World J Clin Oncol. Dec 10, 2015; 6(6): 291-294
Published online Dec 10, 2015. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v6.i6.291
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery in gastric cancer patients with extensive lymph node metastasis
Seiji Ito, Yuichi Ito, Kazunari Misawa, Yasuhiro Shimizu, Taira Kinoshita
Seiji Ito, Yuichi Ito, Kazunari Misawa, Yasuhiro Shimizu, Taira Kinoshita, Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Aichi Cancer Center Hospital, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8681, Japan
Author contributions: Ito S wrote the paper; Ito Y, Misawa K, Shimizu Y and Kinoshita T provided critical revision of the article.
Supported by A National Cancer Center Research and Development Fund (23-A-16, 23-A-19, 26-A-4); and a Health and Labour Sciences Research Grant for Clinical Cancer Research (H22-Gan-016) from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest associated with this manuscript.
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/
Correspondence to: Seiji Ito, MD, PhD, Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Aichi Cancer Center Hospital, 1-1 Kanokoden, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya Aichi 464-8681, Japan. seito@aichi-cc.jp
Telephone: +81-52-7626111 Fax: +81-52-7642963
Received: June 10, 2015
Peer-review started: June 11, 2015
First decision: August 4, 2015
Revised: August 26, 2015
Accepted: September 25, 2015
Article in press: September 28, 2015
Published online: December 10, 2015
Processing time: 181 Days and 21.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Gastric cancer with extensive lymph node metastasis (ELM) is usually considered unresectable and associated with poor outcomes. Phase II studies of neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery have shown the efficacy of this multimodal therapy for this pathology, but many clinical questions remain unresolved, including the criteria for diagnosing ELM, optimal regime, number of courses and extent of lymph node dissection.