Gastric signet ring cell carcinoma, does it confer a worse prognosis and treatment outcome?

Background and aim: Gastric cancer represents the fifth most common cancer worldwide and the fourth most common cause of cancer related death. In recent years many studies focused on the increased incidence of signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) which is considered a poorly cohesive carcinoma with poor prognosis, this study aims to define any significant difference in clinical presentation and survival between gastric SRCC and non-signet ring cell carcinoma ( non-SRCC).
Patients and methods: This is a prospective cohort study which included 68 adenocarcinoma gastric cancer patients 42 with non-SRCC and 26 with SRCC, presented to Medical Oncology Department and Radiotherapy Department, South Egypt Cancer Institute (SECI), between January 2015 to December 2017, patients were followed up for 3 years . All patients performed complete laboratory and radiological investigations for accurate evaluation and staging. Data analysis was done by SPSS version 21, difference was considered statistically significant at P-value < 0.05. Survival curves were conducted by using the Kaplan-Meier methods and were compared with the log-rank test.
Results: There was no significant difference between non-SRCC and SRCC as the one year OS was 18% for non-SRCC and 17 % for SRC while the two year OS was 5% and 4% respectively, the median OS for non-SRCC was 7 months and for SRC was 7.5 months with p-value = 0.669. While one year PFS reached 30% in non-SRCC and 18% for SRC, and two year PFS was 11% for non-SRCC and 10% for SRC, the median PFS for non-SRCC reached 5 months and 5.5 months for SRC with p-value=0.494.
Conclusions: There was no significant difference between SRCC and non-SRCC in terms of OS and PFS.