Clinical stages of gastric cancer and the significance               HU Xiang. Department of General Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian 116011, China
Abstract    The General Rules for Gastric Cancer Study (Japan) and UICC/TNM Stage are the important stage systems for gastric cancer in the world. The two stage systems play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer, and the change of version shows the progression of gastric cancer study. The distinction of classification of lymph node metastasis has the significant difference in the two stage systems. The uniform clinical stage in the world is formed by integrating the General Rules for Gastric Cancer Study (2010 version) and 7th edition UICC/TNM Stage. The feature of the new clinical stages is TNM stage based on T (5 segment), N (4 segment) and the number of lymph node metastasis, which make the survival curve of different clinical stages to be more exact gradation. The General Rules for Gastric Cancer Study (2010 version) is the standard rule for treatment of gastric cancer.