Preface
Gastric cancer is one of the most common solid cancers in the world, but its occurrence is mainly located in East Asia. Recent technical evolution of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) including endoscopic resection, laparoscopic and robotic surgery has been led by Korean and Japanese doctors. These two countries are in ideal environment to make progress of MIS not only by abundant experience for surgery owing to high incidence of gastric cancer, but also by high proportion of early gastric cancer owing to the established national mass screening system. This revolution opens the new chapter of gastric cancer treatment. Although this new strategy provides superior short term outcomes, long term survival is non-inferior at the most compared to conventional technique yet. Because most of the gastric cancer in the world is diagnosed in advanced state, research for gastric cancer needs to focus on improving the survival of patients. However, cancer research to understand the biology of gastric cancer and develop new drug for it still lag behind other cancer types such as lung cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer. Therefore, doctors who are responsible to treat gastric cancer should bridge this gap through the exchange and collaboration.
There has been active academic interchange among doctors from Korea, China, and Japan where the countries in geographic proximity, it has improved the treatment strategies against gastric cancer. On the other hands, the situation of other countries was not well announced to East Asian doctors, consequently it has been underestimated. We invited young surgeons who was studied and trained in Korea to share the information about the situation in their own countries (China, Ukraine, India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, German, Peru and Mexico). The articles in this focused issue will help to know the big picture about gastric cancer through understand the diversity of epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of gastric cancer in the world.
