Giovanni Corso • Franco Roviello
Editors
2013
In 2008, the last year for which international cancer fi gures were available, worldwide gastric cancer incidence estimates were 989,000 new cases and 737,000 deaths (Ferlay et al. 2010). The estimated incidence of gastric cancer in the United States for 2013 is 21,600 with a mortality of 10,990 (Siegel et al. 2013). The two major histological types of gastric cancer (Alberts et al. 2003; Lauren 1965) are: (1) intestinal , which is more common and more often associated with environmental factors and Helicobacter pylori ; and (2) diffuse gastric cancer (DGC), which is less common and more likely to be associated with host factors (Lauren 1965). Hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC) was fi rst described in 1964 in three Māori families from New Zealand (Jones 1964).