Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

In this observational case control survey, ninty patients with histologic diagnosis of gastric cancer from two university hospitals were studied retrospectively. A sizable 50 % of the patients were farmers who lived in the remote and under developed rural areas being in contact with nitrate fertilizer and nitrated soil and having little or no access to the modern food storage and preservations and usually consume large amount of partially decayed contaminated, dried, smoked, salted and starchy food which are the presumed etiologic factors for gastric cancer and therefore the result of this survey might be considered another favorable study for the current hypothesis. The survey revealed that gastric cancer which is the most common gastrointestinal cancer in Iran was significantly more common in men with a mean male to female ratio of 4.5:1 in contrast to the 2:1 ratio of the western countries and in correlation with the respective ratio of a recent study conducted in kashmir, India (11). Thirty six percent of the patients had a long history of smoking which is a relatively rare habit among Iranian women and the large number of female non - smokers might be considered one of the speculative reesnons for the significantly lower incidence of gastric cancer in women in this survey. Twenty two percent of the patients were opium users. The 36% smokers and the 22% opium users are significants and do not match the estimated smokers and opium addicts in this country and whether tobacco and opium should also be considered as risk factors of gastric cancer deserves further investigations. Pathologically only 10.8% of the cases were of infiltrative type and the remainder were practically of the ulcerative and polypoid type, indicating that although gastric cancer is very common in this country but it is usually of the less malignant intestinal type.