Clinicopathological characteristics and prognostic analysis of Lauren classification in gastric adenocarcinoma in China

BACKGROUND: According to the Lauren classification, gastric adenocarcinomas are divided into diffuse and intestinal types. The causative attribution explaining the dismal prognosis of diffuse-type remains unknown. METHODS: We examined the archive of 1000 patients with gastric adenocarcinomas who received radical gastrectomy in our center and assessed the effect of the Lauren classification on survival in a multivariate approach. Moreover we compared the variation of clinical features between the diffuse-type and intestinal-type and explored the contributing factors for the prognostic difference. RESULTS: There were 805 resectable patients for the final analysis. Diffuse-type comprised of 48.7% in the gastric carcinoma in our group and showed poorer prognosis than intestinal-type (P=0.013). Multivariate analysis revealed that independent prognostic factors for gastric carcinoma patients were T stage (P<0.001), N stage (P<0.001) tumor size (P<0.001) and Lauren classification (P=0.003). For the clinical features, diffuse-type was significantly associated with younger age (p<0.001), female preponderance (p <0.001), distal location (P<0.001), advanced pT (p < 0.001), advanced pN (p < 0.001) and advanced TNM stage (p = 0.027). CONCLUSIONS: Diffuse type adenocarcinoma carries a worse prognosis that may be partially explained by the tendency of this subtype to present at more advanced T and N stage. However, Lauren classification has prognostic significance that is independent of T and N stage as well as other prognostic variables based on the multivariate cox analysis.