A combination of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy significantly increases survival in patients with gastric cancer, compared with surgery alone, according to the results of a study presented at the 36th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology [New Orleans, US; May 2000]. The study is the first to offer progress'in a disease we didn't have good options for',says Dr John Macdonald from St. Vincent's Cancer Center, New York, US, lead investigator in the SWOG*study, and may change the standard of care for patients with resected gastric cancer.