Adenocarcinoma of the stomach: a plea for early diagnosis.

In the United States, early diagnosis and cure of gastric carcinoma remain elusive. Patients with this disease commonly have gastrointestinal symptoms that often go unexplained. Physicians give gastric carcinoma a low priority in their differential diagnosis and are unaware of the risk factors patients may have. Patients may have a normal upper gastrointestinal series, and fiberoptic gastroscopy is delayed. Patients with unexplained indigestion and abdominal pain, coupled with such risk factors for gastric carcinoma as national origin, diet, heredity, and previous subtotal gastrectomy for gastric ulcers, should be given the opportunity of esophagogastroduodenoscopy.