Ivan Pleško
Despite gradually decreasing mortality and incidence rates observed from 1930 in developed and later also in other countries of the world stomach cancer is in the year 2000 the fourth most frequent cancer with 876 000 new cases (8.7% of the total) and 647 000 deaths (10.4% of all cancer deaths), The proportion of patients surviving 5 years after diagnosis remained nearly the same – about 20%. The new phenomenon is a changing frequency of malignant lesions, their increase in proximal part of the stomach which are caused by a more agressive diffuse, undifferentiated type of adenocarcinoma with worse prognosis. Decrease of intestinal type with lesions located in distal part of the stomach causes the reduction of gastric cancer as a whole. An important role for the future evolution and prevention of gastric cancer is the indication of Helicobacter pylori infection as carcinogenic to human beings.