Preoperative and postoperative chemotherapy for gastric cancer.

Radical surgery offers the only chance of cure for patients with operable gastric cancer; however, outcomes remain generally poor due to a high rate of relapse post gastric surgery. Multimodality therapy using chemotherapy, radiation or a combination of both have been evaluated in different parts of the world to improve outcomes from surgery alone. Perioperative chemotherapy is generally preferred in Europe in contrast to postoperative chemoradiation in the US or adjuvant fluoropyrimidine chemotherapy in East Asia. Regardless of these variations, systemic chemotherapy consistently results in a survival benefit when used in multimodality treatment of operable gastric cancer.