Epidemiology of intestinal and diffuse types of gastric carcinoma. A time-trend study in Finland with comparison between studies from high- and low-risk areas.
The incidence of gastric cancer has declined markedly in Finland during the last 4 decades. To document the changes caused by that in the ratio of the intestinal type (IT) to the diffuse type (DT) of gastric carcinoma we compared the 367 cases diagnosed from southwestern Finland at the Department of Pathology, Turku University, from 1950-1959 and 1076 cases from 1980-1989. IT virtually disappeared in the male and female populations younger than 50 years, and in patients younger than 60 years, DT became more common than IT (P