Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2010
Introduction
Napoleon Bonaparte's remarkable political and military career was ended by Wellington at Waterloo in 1815. He died at age 52 on St. Helena in 1821 due to gastric cancer. Napoleon had a childhood of poverty, a poor diet in his early career, and a strong family history of gastric cancer, all of which contributed to his demise. It is now apparent that Helicobacter pylori, acting in the context of host genetic susceptibility, is responsible for most cases of stomach cancer. Napoleon was most likely infected with H. pylori – an example of the bacterium being mightier than the sword. This interaction between bacterium and host offers a new paradigm for carcinogenesis in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and provides clues to the prevention and screening of this lethal malignancy.
As information concerning the epidemiology and molecular genetics of gastric cancer improves, sophisticated strategies for early detection and prevention of this disease in high-risk areas of the world will be developed. Eventually, molecular techniques will help identify those people at highest risk for this disease, so that resource-intensive endoscopic screening programs can be directed to this population. It is possible that, with directed use, screening programs will be validated by gastric cancer mortality reduction.
In this chapter, new concepts and horizons concerning prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment of patients with gastric adenocarcinoma are presented.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.