D2.5 dissection for gastric carcinoma.

Worldwide, gastric cancer ranks second only to lung cancer in mortality and accounts for 500 000 deaths annually. Since 1930, the incidence of gastric carcinoma in the United States has been declining steadily and plateaued during the 1980-1990 decade. Mortality rates for white males in the United States were approximately 40 per 100000 in 1930, compared with 5.4 per 100000 in 1994. For nonwhite males the rates were 23.7 per 100 000 in 1955 and 12 per 100 000 in 1985. In the United States in 2002, an estimated 21 600 new cases and 12 400 deaths were attributable to gastric carcinoma.