Geographical pathology of gastric carcinoma: a comparative study on histological types between high and low mortality areas in Japan.

A histological comparison of 1,687 cases of gastric carcinoma in Niigata, a high mortality prefecture for this cancer, and 954 cases in Kagoshima, a low mortality area, was carried out in order to investigate whether or not this difference in mortality reflects any change of histological type of gastric carcinoma. In both series, in both males and females , the proportion of adenocarcinoma increased with increase of the patients' age, while that of diffuse carcinoma decreased. When data from the two prefectures were compared, there was no significant difference in age group distribution of each histological type. It appears that the same histological types of gastric carcinoma occur throughout Japan.