Lymphatic metastasis rules of adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction and their significances for clinical management        CHEN Lin*, ZHANG Shi-wu. *Department of General Surgery, the General Hospital of People’s Liberation Army of China, Beijing 100853, China
Corresponding author: CHEN Lin, E-mail: chenlinbj@vip.sina.com
Abstract    Despite the decrease in incidence of gastric cancer during the last 30 years, the disease remains one of the leading causes of worldwide cancer death. Surgery is the only potentially curative treatment for gastric cancer. The location of the cancer must be described as it is important, not only for assessing appropriateness of surgical approach, but also for survival. Proximal gastric cancer has been associated with advanced stage and worse overall survival compared with distal cancer. Nodal status is an important prognostic indicator for gastric cancer. Knowing the rules of lymphatic metastasis in esophagogastric junction cancer, determining an optimal surgical approach and extent of lymph node dissection, may have a better overall survival of the esophagogastric junction cancer.