Comparison of treatment strategies based on clinical and pathological nodal status in resectable gastric adenocarcinoma.

Summary: When people have stomach cancer surgery, doctors look at their lymph nodes to decide on extra treatments like chemotherapy or radiation. Sometimes, scans before surgery show clear lymph nodes, but the actual surgery reveals cancer hiding there. This study looked at over 7,800 patients. It found that if cancer is found in the lymph nodes after surgery, adding radiation to chemotherapy works much better than chemotherapy alone to help patients live longer. The study also showed that early scans are often wrong about whether cancer has spread to the lymph nodes.