• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.141-147
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• 2006

PET detects only less than 50% of early gastric cancer and 62-98% of advanced gastric cancer. Therefore, mass screening programs are recommended for all adults over the age of 40 for early detection and early treatment of gastric cancer through endoscopy or various radiological tests. The most important step after being diagnosed with gastric cancer is accurate staging, which mainly evaluates tumor resectability to avoid unnecessary surgery. Important factors that affect tumor resectability are whether the tumor can be separated from adjacent organs or important blood vessels, the extent of lymph node metastasis, presence of peritoneal metastasis, or distant organ metastasis. To evaluate the extent of local tumor invasion, anatomical imaging that has superior spatial resolution is essential. There are a few studies on prognostic significance of FDG uptake with inconsistent results between them. In spite of lower sensitivities for lymph node staging, the specificities of CT and PET are very high, and the specificity for PET tends to be higher than that for CT. Limited data published so far show that PET seems less useful in the detection of lung and bone metastasis. In the evaluation of pleural or peritoneal metastasis, PET seems very specific but insensitive as well. When FDG uptake of the primary tumor is low, the distant metastasis is also known to show low FDG uptake reducing its detection. There are only a few data available in the evaluation of recurrence detection and treatment response using FDG PET.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.135-137
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• 2014

Metastasis of gastric adenocarcinoma to the prostate gland is extremely rare. Herein, we report a case of gastric adenocarcinoma in a 56-year-old man with prostatic metastasis diagnosed through the analysis of biopsy specimens from representative lesions in the stomach and prostate gland. Immunohistochemistry of the prostatic tissue showed positive staining for cytokeratin 7 and negative staining for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), whereas the serum PSA level was normal, confirming the diagnosis of prostatic metastasis from carcinoma of the stomach.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.34-38
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• 2002

Positron emission tomography(PET) is an imaging method that employs radionuclide and tomography techniques. Since 1995, we applied PET not only to the diagnosis of breast cancer but also to the detection of abnormalities in the augmented breast and to the detection of metastasis. Until 2001, we evaluated 242 breast cases by PET at PET center of Seoul National University Hospital. Our group has reported serially at the international journals. In the first report, PET showed high sensitivity for detecting breast cancer, both the primary and axillary node metastasis. A total of 27 patients underwent breast operations based on PET results at Seoul National University Hospital from 1995 to 1996. The diagnostic accuracy of PET were 97% for the primary tumor mass and 96% for axillary lymph node metastasis. In case of the breast augmented, PET also showed excellent diagnostic results for primary breast cancer and axillary lymph node metastasis where mammography and ultrasound could not diagnose properly. PET also had outstanding results in the detection of recurrent or metastatic breast cancer(sensitivity 94%, specificity 80%, accuracy 89%). In addition, our study gave some evidence that PET could be applied further to evaluate the growth rate of tumors by measuring SUV, and finally to prognosticated the disease. PET could also be applied to evaluate the response after chemotherapy to measure its metabolic rate and size. In conclsion, PET is a highly sensitive, accurate diagnostic tool for breast cancer of primary lesion in various conditions including metastasis.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.301-312
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• 2015

Metastasis is one of hallmarks of cancer and a major cause of cancer death. Combatting metastasis is highly challenging. To overcome these difficulties, researchers have focused on physical properties of metastatic cancer cells. Metastatic cancer cells from patients are softer than benign cancer or normal cells. Changes of viscoelasticity of cancer cells are related to the keratin network. Unexpectedly, keratin network is dynamic and regulation of keratin network is important to the metastasis of cancer. Keratin is composed of heteropolymer of type I and II. Keratin connects from the plasma membrane to nucleus. Several proteins including kinases, and protein phosphatases bind to keratin intermediate filaments. Several endogenous compounds or toxic compounds induce phosphorylation and reorganization of keratin network in cancer cells, leading to increased migration. Continuous phosphorylation of keratin results in loss of keratin, which is one of the features of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT). Therefore, several proteins involved in phosphorylation and reorganization of keratin also have a role in EMT. It is likely that compounds controlling phosphorylation and reorganization of keratin are potential candidates for combating EMT and metastasis.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.10-13
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• 2009

The prognosis of gastric cancer with hepatic metastasis is very poor, even though several treatment modalities exist, such as surgical resection. Indeed, a standard therapy has not been established in such patients. Recently, attempts were made to treat hepatic metastasis of gastric cancer with radiofrequency (RF), which was originally used in primary or metastatic liver cancer. RF has been reported to show similar survival compared to surgical resection and is emerging as a new treatment modality even though it is still not conclusive with respect to efficacy and safety due to the paucity of reports. A prospective study is warranted to evaluate the efficacy of RF in the treatment of gastric cancer with hepatic metastasis compared with conventional modalities.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.2925-2929
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• 2013

Objective: To explore the relationships between primary tumor $^{18}F$-FDG uptake measured as the SUVmax and local extension, and nodal or distant organ metastasis in patients with NSCLC on pretreatment PET-CT. Methods: 93 patients with NSCLC who underwent $^{18}F$-FDG PET-CT scans before the treatment were included in the study. Primary tumor SUVmax was calculated; clinical stages, presence of local extension, nodal and distant organ metastases were recorded. The patients with SUVmax${\geq}2.5$ were divided into low and high SUVmax groups by using the median SUVmax. The low SUVmax group consisted of 45 patients with SUVmax<10.5, the high SUVmax group consisted of 46 patients with SUVmax${\geq}10.5$. Their data were compared statistically. Results: 91 cases with SUVmax${\geq}2.5$ were included for analysis. The mean SUVmax in patients without any metastasis was $7.42{\pm}2.91$ and this was significantly lower than that ($12.18{\pm}4.94$) in patients with nodal and/or distant organ metastasis (P=0.000). In the low SUV group, 19 patients had local extension, 22 had nodal metastasis, and 9 had distant organ metastasis. In the high SUV group, 31 patients had local extension, 37 had nodal metastasis, and 18 had distant organ metastases. There was a significant difference in local extension (P =0.016), distant organ metastasis (P =0.046), and most significant difference in nodal metastasis rate (P =0.002) between the two groups. In addition, there was a moderate correlation between SUVmax and tumor size (r = 0.642, P<0.001), tumor stage (r = 0.546, P<0.001), node stage (r = 0.388, P<0.001), and overall stage (r = 0.445, P= 0.000). Conclusion: Higher primary tumor SUVmax predicts higher extensional or metastatic potential in patients with NSCLC. Patients with higher SUVmax may need a close follow-up and more reasonable individual treatment because of their higher extensional and metastatic potential.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.162-167
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• 2010

Purpose: The incidence of lymph node metastasis has been reported to range from 2.6 to 4.8% in early stage gastric cancer with mucosal invasion (T1a cancer). Lymph node metastasis in early stage gastric cancer is known as an important predictive factor. We analyzed the prediction factors of lymph node metastasis in T1a cancer. Materials and Methods: A total of 9,912 patients underwent radical gastrectomy due to gastric cancer from October 1994 to July 2006 in the Department Of Surgery at Samsung Medical Center. We did a retrospective analysis of 2,524 patients of these patients, ones for whom the cancer was confined within the mucosa. Results: Among the 2,524 patients, 57 (2.2%) were diagnosed with lymph node metastasis, and of these, cancer staging was as follows: 41 were N1, 8 were N2, and 8 were N3a. Univariate analysis of clinicopathological factors showed that the following factors were significant predictors of metastasis: tumor size larger than 4 cm, the presence of middle and lower stomach cancer, poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma and signet-ring cell carcinoma, diffuse type cancer (by the Lauren classification), and lymphatic invasion. Multivariate analysis showed that lymphatic invasion and tumor larger than 4 cm were significant factors with P<0.001 and P=0.024, respectively. Conclusions: The frequency of lymph node metastasis is extremely low in early gastric cancer with mucosal invasion. However, when lymphatic invasion is present or the tumor is larger than 4 cm, there is a greater likelihood of lymph node metastasis. In such cases, surgical treatments should be done to prevent disease recurrence.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.1481-1488
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• 2014

Background: To avoid performing axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) for non-sentinel lymph node (SLN)-negative patients with-SLN positive axilla, nomograms for predicting the status have been developed in many centers. We created a new nomogram predicting non-SLN metastasis in SLN-positive patients with invasive breast cancer and evaluated 14 existing breast cancer models in our patient group. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and thirty seven invasive breast cancer patients with SLN metastases who underwent ALND were included in the study. Based on independent predictive factors for non-SLN metastasis identified by logistic regression analysis, we developed a new nomogram. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves for the models were created and the areas under the curves (AUC) were computed. Results: In a multivariate analysis, tumor size, presence of lymphovascular invasion, extranodal extension of SLN, large size of metastatic SLN, the number of negative SLNs, and multifocality were found to be independent predictive factors for non-SLN metastasis. The AUC was found to be 0.87, and calibration was good for the present Ondokuz Mayis nomogram. Among the 14 validated models, the MSKCC, Stanford, Turkish, MD Anderson, MOU (Masaryk), Ljubljana, and DEU models yielded excellent AUC values of > 0.80. Conclusions: We present a new model to predict the likelihood of non-SLN metastasis. Each clinic should determine and use the most suitable nomogram or should create their own nomograms for the prediction of non- SLN metastasis.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.19-23
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• 2004

Background and Objectives: Neck metastasis is one of the most important prognostic factor in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Recently, elective neck dissection has been widely accepted for accurate pathologic staging and elective treatment of neck. Occult metastasis rate of laryngeal cancer varies widely depending upon authors. To evaluate the rate and characteristics of occult metastasis and efficacy of the elective neck dissection in clinical N0 laryngeal cancer, we performed this study. Materials and Method: Seventy two patients (supraglottic cancer: 19 cases, glottic cancer: 53 cases) who underwent surgery for laryngeal cancer as an initial treatment from 1993 to 2002 were evaluated. All was underwent elective neck dissection at the time of surgery for the primary treatment. The record of patients and pathologic report were reviewed retrospectively. Results: Occult metastasis rate of supraglottic and glottic cancer were 42.1% (8/19) and 9.4% (5/53), respectively. According to T stage, the occult meastasis of supraglottic and glottic cancer was 20%, 0% in T1, 36.4%, 0% in T2, 100%, 40% in T2, 100%, 20% in T4, respectively. Occult metastasis was mostly confined within level II (69.2%), III (76.9%), IV (23.1%). Conclusion: Based on ours results, elective neck dissection might be needed in treating of clinically N0 all supraglottic cancer and advanced T3, T4 glottic cancer.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.86-93
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• 2011

Purpose: When performing a laparoscopic assisted gastrectomy, a function-preserving gastrectomy is performed depending on the location of the primary gastric cancer. This study examined the incidence of lymph node metastasis by the lymph node station number by tumor location to determine the optimal extent of the lymph node dissection. Materials and Methods: The subjects consisted of 1,510 patients diagnosed with gastric cancer who underwent a gastrectomy between 1996 and 2005. The patients were divided into three groups: upper, middle and lower third, depending on the location of the primary tumor. The lymph node metastasis patterns were analyzed in the total and early gastric cancer patients. Results: In all patients, lymph node station numbers 1, 2, 3, 7, 10 and 11 metastases were dominant in the cancer originating in the upper third, whereas station numbers 4, 5, 6 and 8 were dominant in the lower third. In early gastric cancer patients, the station number of lymph nodes with a metastasis did not show a significant difference in stage pT1a disease. On the other hand, a metastasis in lymph node station number 6 was dominant in stage pT1b disease that originated in the lower third of the stomach. Conclusions: When performing a laparoscopic-assisted gastrectomy for early gastric cancer, a limited lymphadenectomy is considered adequate during a function-preserving gastrectomy in mucosal (T1a) cancer. On the other hand, for submucosal (T1b) cancer, a number 6 node dissection should be performed when performing a pylorus preserving gastrectomy.