Introduction and Methods

Abstract

It is now just over 100 years since Theodore Billroth successfully undertook the first gastrectomy for a carcinoma of the stomach. The patient was node positive and succumbed within a short time to the disease. Billroth’s major achievement was that the patient survived surgery. Many of the advances since that time have come in safer surgical and anaesthetic techniques, and gastrectomy is now a safer procedure. Whilst in the Western World, particularly in the United States of America, there has been a significant decrease in the incidence of this lesion, world-wide it still remains the most common cause of death from malignant disease and there are strong indications that the incidence of lesions of the cardia are increasing.