Clinical Study on Laparoscopic Gastrectomy for Early Gastric Cancer (COACT_0301)

Rationale: For the treatment of early gastric cancer (EGC) in the distal portion of the stomach, subtotal gastrectomy and lymph node dissection has been a standard operation. With the increasing tendency toward minimally invasive surgery, there has been an effort to apply minimally invasive techniques to the treatment of EGC. Laparoendoluminal mucosectomy and lesion-lifting gastric wedge resection have been developed for this purpose. However, these methods have the disadvantage of limited indications according to the size, shape and depth of invasion. Kitano et al. performed the first laparoscopy-assisted subtotal gastrectomy with lymph node dissection and manual anastomosis with anterior wall lifting method for a patient with EGC. In 1995, Uyama et al. and Nagai et al. performed laparoscopy-assisted subtotal gastrectomy with lymph node dissections using an automatic stapler instead of manual anastomosis for the gastroduodenal anastomosis. It has been possible to maintain an adequate distance from the lesion to the proximal and distal margins of resection, to perform radical lymph node dissection, and to achieve excellent postoperative recovery. However, there is a very limited evidence of superiority of laparoscopic gastrectomy over open surgery. There is only one interim report of randomized clinical trial of comparing laparoscopic gastrectomy and open gastrectomy. A well-designed clinical study to prove the benefit and safety is definitely needed Objective: to compare Laparoscopy - assisted Distal Gastrectomy (LADG) with Open Distal Gastrectomy (ODG) in terms of survival, recovery, pain, complications, and quality of life (QOL) Hypothesis: LADG is beneficial in QOL, pain, recovery, complications while maintaining equivalent survival with ODG