Treatment and prognosis of gastrointestinal stromal tumor:an analysis of 172 patients        WANG Gang, ZHANG Ru-peng, ZHAO Jing-zhu, et al. Department of Gastric Cancer, Cancer Institute and Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300060, China 
Corresponding author: ZHANG Ru-peng, E-mail: zhangrp @hotmail.com
Abstract    Objective    To investigate treatment and prognostic factors of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). Methods    The clinicopathological data of 172 patients with GIST admitted between January 2001 and December 2007 were analyzed retrospectively and the prognostic factors were evalutated. Results    The 1-,3- and 5-year survival rates of the 153 patients followed up were 96.0%, 82.6% and 60.5% respectively. Univariate analysis revealed that the tumor size, complete tumor resection，mitotic count，infiltrated to surrounding tissue, preoperative metastasis， Fletcher classification and adjuvant postoperative therapy with imatinib were related to the survival rates. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that preoperative metastasis，Fletcher classification and adjuvant postoperative therapy with imatinib were the independent prognostic factors for survival. Conclusion    For GIST, preoperative metastasis is the independent factor predicting poor prognosis； Fletcher classification is effective to evaluate the behaviors and prognosis；Surgery is the main therapy and targeted therapy can improve survival.