Hepatic infusion-chemotherapy of liver metastases from stomach cancer--comparative study for intraarterial group and non-intraarterial group

Metastasis to the liver was detected in 96 out of 1,825 patients with gastric cancer treated at our department from April 1980 to March 1990, and was respectively found to be synchronous and metachronous in 63 and 33 of the 96 patients. We compared survival durations among these 96 patients according to synchronous or metachronous metastasis by dividing them into the intermittent intra-arterial chemotherapy (FAM) group (18 patients) and non-intra-arterial chemotherapy group (78 patients). In the comparison between the intra-arterial and non-intra-arterial groups, the survival duration was determined to be significantly longer in the intra-arterial group by Wilcoxon generalized test and Cox-Mantel test (p less than 0.01). Among the patients with synchronous metastasis, a significantly longer survival duration was also observed in the intra-arterial group (p less than 0.01). The direct effect of intra-arterial chemotherapy through CT was seen in 56% of the patients in the intra-arterial group. These results indicated the usefulness of FAM hepatic infusion chemotherapy for the treatment of metastasis of gastric cancer to the liver. It is expected that therapeutic results will be much more improved by selecting more effective anticancer drugs in the future.