Wang XY, et al. - This study was conducted to determine if the risk of lymph node metastasis (LNM) and submucosal invasion is equal for both papillary early gastric cancer (EGC) or tubular EGC modalities. For relevant studies published until January 2017, the PubMed and the Web of Science databases were searched. In this analysis, a total of 13 studies were included. Researchers identified an increased risk of submucosal invasion and LNM in papillary EGC compared to tubular EGC, which indicates that papillary EGC needs more careful clinical management than tubular EGC. They observed that papillary EGC showed significantly more frequent elevated/flat growth patterns.