Prevalence of HER2 expression and its association with clinicopathological parameters in gastric and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma: A 10‑year experience of an academic center

HER2 overexpression is a marker for targeted therapy in adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) and stomach. The present study aimed to evaluate the frequency of HER2 overexpression with reference to clinicopathological characteristics in subjects from King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia over a 10-year period. A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted on all biopsy and resection specimens diagnosed with either gastric cancer (GC) or GEJ adenocarcinomas from patients between January 2014 and December 2023 that had a final pathology report. Demographic characteristics of 122 patients, including age and sex, were collected, along with pathological details such as tumor grade, histological subtype and HER2 status. χ² test was used to analyze the association between collected clinicopathological characteristics and HER2 status of the tumor. Most patients were aged 40-60 years. Males constituted 66% of the patients, and the ethnic distribution between Saudi and non-Saudi was almost equal. The most common subtype of cancer was the intestinal type (49%), and the majority of cases were poorly differentiated (64%). HER2 status was assessed in only 61% of cases, with 13.5% showing gene amplification. There was no significant association found between HER2 status and clinicopathological features.