Inter-Observer Agreement On Assessment of Photo Documentation in Bleeding Peptic Ulcer

the adequacy of current screening interval. Methods: Three hundreds one medical records from the patients who underwent surgical treatment for primary GC at Korea University Ansan Hospital from January 2002 through December 2006 were reviewed retrospectively. After patients were divided into three groups according to the previous history of gastric endoscopy and the motivation for endoscopic examination based on the presence or absence of symptoms: the group I, patients with repeated endoscopy within the last 2 years (before the detection of GC) regardless of symptom (nZ12), the group II, asymptomatic patients without endoscopic screening within the last 2 years (nZ37), and the group III, symptomatic patiens without endoscopy (nZ252), the clinicopathologic characteristics of three groups were compared. Results: The proportion of early gastric cancer and the tumor size among the 3 groups were 75% vs. 68% vs. 41% (pZ0.001) and 2.7 ! 3.6 cm vs. 4.1 ! 2.5 cm vs. 5.2 ! 3.3 cm (p Z 0.012), respectively. GC in the group I and II was characterized by smaller cancer in an earlier stage. However, notable differences among the 3 gropus were not found in age, sex, tumor location and histology. Conclusion: Endoscopic screening for asymptomatic patients is useful for detecting GC at the early stage. Probably, periodic(2 years interval) endoscopy enables early detection of GC at a smaller size regardless of symptom.