Abstract

Purpose: The Finnish National Esophago-Gastric Cancer Cohort (FINEGO) was established with the aim of identifying factors that could contribute to improved outcomes in oesophago-gastric cancer. The aim of this study is to describe the patients with gastric cancer included in FINEGO.

Participants: A total of 10 457 patients with gastric cancer or tumour diagnosis in the Finnish Cancer Registry or the Finnish Patient Registry during 1987–2016 were included in the cohort, with follow-up from Causes of Death Registry until 31 December 2016. All of the participants were at least 18 years of age, and had undergone either resectional or endoscopic mucosal surgery with curative or palliative intent.

Findings: to date Of the 10 457 patients, 90.1% were identified to have cancer in both cancer and patient registries. In all, the median age was 70 at the time of surgery, 54.5% of the patients were men and 64.4% had no comorbidities. Education data were available for 31.1% of the patients, of whom the majority had had <12 years of formal education. Of the 7798 with cancer staging data available, 41.1% had a local cancer. Adenocarcinoma was the most common (94.2%) histological type. Almost all patients underwent open gastrectomy and 214% in hospitals with annual volume of more than 30 gastrectomies per year. A total of 8561 deaths occurred during the study period, of which 6474 were due to oesophago-gastric cancers. The 5-year survival was 34.6% and 5-year cancer-specific survival was 39.7%.

Future plans: The data in FINEGO can be currently used for registry-based research but is being expanded by data extraction from patient records and scanning of histological samples from the Finnish biobanks. Initially, we are planning on studies on the national trends in treatment and mortality, and studies on the demographic factors and their influence on survival.