FIVE-YEAR SURVIVAL RATE FOR GASTRIC CANCER: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON BY ECONOMIC GROUPS

Over the past half century, there has been a significant increase in the number of patients surviving cancer.At the same time, experts emphasize that this progress is uneven: a number of the most aggressive forms of cancer show minimal improvements in survival rates compared to the 1970s.For some oncological pathologies, such as melanoma or skin cancer, ten-year survival rates exceed 90%, and in general, about half of patients diagnosed with cancer can expect to live for more than ten years -twice as long as in the early 1970s.However, the results of the study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine indicate that for cancers of the esophagus, stomach, lung and pancreas, the improvement remains minimal: ten-year survival for these pathologies does not exceed 20%, and for pancreatic cancer it is about 5%.Scientists note that the trend towards increasing survival rates for many types of cancer is primarily associated with the development of diagnostics and improved treatment approaches.A striking example is breast cancer, for which ten-year survival rates increased from 42% to over 76% between 1971 and 2018 due to the introduction of screening programs and the emergence of targeted therapies.In contrast, oncological diseases with the lowest survival rates are usually difficult to detect early and are characterized by limited therapeutic options.As a result, the difference between the best and worst survival rates is constantly increasing.Despite the global decrease in the incidence of gastric cancer, in Ukraine this type of oncology remains one of the most common, occupying the 4th-6th place in frequency.It is the second leading cause of cancer mortality among men (after lung cancer) and women (after breast cancer).For many years, the debate has been on-going about the role of extended organ resections in the treatment of locally advanced gastric cancer (LSGC).Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of patient survival: some studies report minimal differences between the results after gastrectomy with splenectomises or pancreaticosplenectomy, while others indicate an increase in mortality, an increase in the frequency of complications and a prolongation of hospitalization when performing extended resections.Some authors emphasize the feasibility of combining extended lymphadenectomy with resection of adjacent organs in cases of gastric adenocarcinoma with clinical T3-T4 in order to achieve radically of