BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer (GC) is a predominately male disease. Usually for every female that suffers from this condition there are two males and occurred an increase in the number of females in last decades. Brazil is poor in data about this issue. AIM: To verify if in Brazil it happened: a) a change in the gender ratio and on the average age of the patients; b) an increase in the number of patients with 70 years of age or more suffering from this disease; c) changes in the gender ratio and in the average age in the several gastric locations during the period of study. METHODS: The medical history of patients diagnosed with primary gastric adenocarcinoma, between 1971 and 1998 were obtained at Hospital das Clínicas of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. Exclusion criteria were: patients suffering from a non epithelial gastric malignancy; adenocarcinoma from the intestinal metaplasia in the distal esophagus invading the proximal stomach and patients submitted to a gastric resection, due to a benign or malignant tumor during the last five years prior to the surgical procedure analyzed in this study. The patients were divided into 10 years age groups and also divided in three groups, according to their ages and time intervals. Interrelationships between gender and age, and with tumor´s location on gastric wall were analyzed. RESULTS: From 1971 to 1998, 1578 patients with GC were hospitalized. Among them, 1021 were treated with gastric resection, corresponding to 64.7% of all patients. There was an increase in the proportion of patients older than 70 years, and decrease between 41 and 70 years. There was no statistical significant difference among the average ages and the different locations. There were significant differences for the locations favoring proximal third and stump, both more prevalent in males. CONCLUSIONS: a) Occurred modifications in the ratio between genders: greater number of women and an increase in the number of male patients in the age group between 41 and 70 years; b) it was proved the greater number of occurrences in patients over 70 years of age; c) there was a greater increase in the male predominance in the tumors located in the stomach´s proximal third.
Gastric neoplasm; Epidemiology; Surgery
