The Usefulness of Gastric Mass Screening Using Serum Pepsinogen Levels Compared with Photofluorography

Yoshihara Masaharu

Sumii Koji

Haruta Ken

Kiyohira Kuninushi

Hattori Nobuaki

Tanaka Shinji

Kajiyama Goro

Shigenobu Takuso

Hiroshima Journal of Medical Sciences

[PISSN] 0018-2052

[EISSN] 2433-7668

[NCID] AA00664312

Chronic atrophic gastritis, which is thought to be a high risk for gastric cancer, can be diagnosed by serum pepsinogen levels. We compared the usefulness of the measurement of pepsinogen levels and indirect photofluorography as indicators of gastric cancer in a mass screening involving 5,620 Japanese subjects (mean age: 60.1 years old; male : female = 2,268 : 3,352) in 1991 and 1992. Subjects with a serum pepsinogen I level below 30 μg/liter or a pepsinogen I/II ratio below 2.0 were considered to be at high risk of gastric cancer. The incidence of gastric cancer and the ratio of early cancers detected by pepsinogen levels (0.12%, 4/7) were similar to those detected by photofluorography (0.11 %, 4/6). Our results showed that mass screening using pepsinogen levels was as useful as indirect photofluorography for the detection of gastric cancer in Japan. In addition, our results showed that the sensitivity of gastric mass screening was increased when the measurement of serum pepsinogen levels was combined with photofluorography.

Serum pepsinogen

Gastric mass screening

Gastric cancer

Photofluorography

Medical sciences [ 490 ]

eng

Hiroshima University Medical Press

[ISSN] 0018-2052

[NCID] AA00664312