Abstract
Background: The timing and incidence of recurrent bone metastasis (BM) after radical gastrectomy in patients with gastric cancer (GC) as well as the survival of these patients were not fully understood. The aim of this study was to analyze the data of an observational GC cohort and identify patients who underwent curative gastrectomy and had recurrent BM to describe and clarify the pattern and profile of BM evolution after surgery. Methods: Data were retrieved from a hospital-based GC cohort, and patients who underwent upfront radical gastrectomy were selected. The time points of specific organ metastatic events were recorded, and the person-year incidence rate of metastatic events was calculated. The latency period of BM events after gastrectomy was measured and compared with that of the other two most common metastatic events, liver metastasis (LM) and distant lymph node metastasis (LNM), using analysis of variance. Propensity score matching and subgroup analysis were used for sensitivity analysis.