Prevalence of Family History of Cancer among Gastric Cancer Patients at Brazilian National Cancer Institute

Abstract

Background: Gastric cancer is the third most incident malignancy and the fifth leading cause of death in the world. In Brazil, it is the fourth most com-mon tumour in men and the fifth in women. Familial aggregation of this tu-mour is being studied and discussed by experts. Aim: Determine the frequen-cy of family history of cancer in patients with gastric cancer, suggesting fa-milial aggregation or increased risk for hereditary cancer syndromes. Me-thods: This is a retrospective cross-sectional study carried out from January 2011 to March 2015 at the Department of Abdominal and Pelvic Surgery of the Brazilian National Cancer Institute (INCA). Data were collected from elec-tronic medical records and analyzed using SPSS Statistics® version 20. Results: 873 patients with gastric adenocarcinoma were analyzed. A family history of cancer was reported by 451 patients (51.6%), which reported cancer in 878 relatives, of which 110 (12.6%), reported having more than three relatives with any type of cancer. The most prevalent malignancies among these relatives were gastric cancer (21.3%) and breast cancer (9.5%). Conclusion: Most of the patients had cancer family history, being gastric cancer the most common. The high percentage of cancer family history confirms the importance of col-lecting this information, whose lack reflects professional negligence, as family history study can serve as a low-cost tool, favoring prevention and early diag-How to cite this paper: Figueiredo, T., Guedes, M.T.S., T. Figueiredo et al. 26 nosis, situations where morbidity and mortality are smaller, thus reducing health costs and assistance and preserving lives.