Although the overall incidence of gastric cancer has been decreasing, it remains one of the most serious cancers and the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Radical surgery is considered the only treatment that can completely eradicate gastric cancer and is also the foundation of gastric cancer treatment. Throughout the development of gastric cancer surgery, the scope of surgery for gastric cancer has gone through the process of “from small to large, and then from large to small”. With the development and popularization of endoscopic, laparoscopic, and robotic techniques, gastric cancer surgery has gradually entered a new era of precise minimally invasive surgery.

Endoscopic examination is still considered the most effective method for early-stage gastric cancer (EGC) detection. Artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted endoscopic diagnosis is a hot spot of research. Endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) and endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) are widely accepted and have been used for the treatment of EGC. Laparoscopic or robotic surgery has improved early-phase recovery after gastric cancer surgery. Recently, preservation of late-phase quality of life has become an issue of increasing concern. Function-preserving gastrectomy, a solution between endoscopic treatment and standard gastrectomy in terms of invasiveness, could be considered to avoid excessive invasive surgery. The clinical application of sentinel node navigation surgery for early gastric cancer might lead us to avoid unnecessary lymph nodes dissection, which could preserve the patient’s quality of life after operation. Real-time imaging to find positive surgical margins during a surgical procedure may be useful to diminish the rate of recurrence. Intraoperative fluorescence imaging or fluorescence-guided surgery can offer highly reliable tumor visualization for localization and margin identification. The targeted fluorescent labeling of cancer cells may therefore alter the ways we detect and treat cancer.

The Special Issue aims to provide an update on gastric cancer treatment, highlighting current individualized strategies and future perspectives. We welcome both original research and review articles covering precise minimally invasive surgery in gastric cancer.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• AI-assisted endoscopic diagnosis
• Endoscopic resection including ESD and EMR
• Laparoscopic and robotic surgery
• Sentinel node navigation surgery
• Function-preserving surgery
• Fluorescence-guided surgery for gastric cancer