Evaluation of the Seventh Edition of American Joint Committee on Cancer TNM Staging System for Gastric Cancer: Results from a Chinese Monoinstitutional Study

Objective. To investigate the validity of the 8thedition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) TNM staging system for gastric cancer.Methods. The clinicopathologic data of 7371 patients who were diagnosed with gastric cancer and had 16 or more involved lymph nodes (LNs) were retrieved from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database and retrospectively reviewed.Results. Stage migration occurred primarily during stage III between the 7thand 8thedition TNM staging systems. Stages IIIB and IIIC in the 7thedition staging system were divided in the 8thedition and had obvious differences in survival rates (bothP<0.001). The 8thedition TNM stages IIIC and IV showed similar survival rates (P=0.101). The prognosis of patients with T4aN3bM0 was not different from that of patients with TxNxM1 (P=0.433), while the prognosis of patients with T4bN3bM0 was significantly poorer than that of patients with TxNxM1 (P=0.008). A revised TNM system with both T4aN3bM0 and T4bN3bM0 incorporated into stage IV was proposed. Multivariable regression analysis showed that the revised TNM system, but not the 7thand 8theditions, was an independent factor for disease-specific survival (DSS) in the third step of the analysis. Further analyses revealed that the revised TNM system had superior discriminatory ability to the 8thedition staging system, which was also an improvement over the 7thedition staging system.Conclusion. The 8thedition of the AJCC TNM staging system is superior to the 7thedition for predicting the DSS rates of gastric cancer patients. However, for better prognostic stratification, it might be more suitable for T4aN3bM0/T4bN3bM0 to be incorporated into stage IV in the 8thedition TNM staging system.

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Comparing prognostic values of the 7th and 8th editions of the American Joint Committee on Cancer TNM staging system for gastric cancer

The International Journal of Biological Markers ◽

10.1177/1724600819891585 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 26-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ming-hua Zhu ◽

Ke-cheng Zhang ◽

Ze-long Yang ◽

Zhi Qiao ◽

Lin Chen

Keyword(s):

Gastric Cancer ◽

Overall Survival ◽

Cancer Patients ◽

Staging System ◽

Tnm Staging ◽

American Joint Committee ◽

Tnm Staging System ◽

Staging Systems ◽

Gastric Cancer Patients ◽

8Th Edition

Background and Aim: Our aim was to compare the prognostic value of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 7th and 8th editions staging systems for patients with gastric cancer in China. Methods: A total of 1326 gastric cancer patients diagnosed between 2008 and 2012 were included. The discriminative ability of the AJCC 8th and 7th editions was compared using the Harrell’s concordance index (C-index). Results: There are two main modifications in the 8th edition. (i) pN3 staging was divided into pN3a and pN3b. The gastric cancer patients with pN3a experienced significantly better overall survival compared with those with pN3b (5-year overall survival: 34.5% vs. 15.6%, P < 0.001) (stratified by pT: pT3: 5-year overall survival: 33.9% vs. 13.2%, P < 0.001; pT4a: 32.8% vs. 16.9%, P = 0.056; pT4b: 17.0% vs. 11.1%, P = 0.048). (ii) Subgroup staging adjustments. The subgroup staging adjustments (T3N3bM0 (IIIB→IIIC), T4aN3aM0 (IIIC→IIIB), T4bN0M0 (IIIB→IIIA), and T4bN2M0 (IIIC→IIIB)) resulted in more gastric cancer patients being accurately staged. Furthermore, the C-index value of the 8th edition tumor node metastasis (TNM) staging system was significantly higher than that of the AJCC 7th TNM staging system to predict the survival of gastric cancer patients (0.701 vs. 0.685, P < 0.001). Conclusions: The 8th edition of the TNM staging system is superior to the 7th edition staging system for prediction of survival of gastric cancer patients in China.

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