Background: To investigate the clinical utility of several established inflammatory, nutritional and tumor markers, and to construct a new scoring system based on preoperative prognostic markers to predict outcomes in gastric cancer (GC).
Methods: We retrospectively assessed 688 consecutive patients who underwent curative resection followed by adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II-III GC from 2000 to 2012.
Results: On multivariate analysis, C-reactive protein/albumin (CRP/Alb) ratio (>0.2), prognostic nutritional index (PNI) (score 1), preoperative body weight loss (>6%) and carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9) (>27 U/mL) independently predicted unfavorable cancer-specific survival (CSS). These 4 preoperative prognostic markers were allocated 1 point each. Then, a new systemic prognostic score (SPS) was constructed based on the total score. Multivariate analysis revealed that SPS was an independent predictor of CSS (P < 0.001). Patients with a SPS of 0, 1, 2, or 3/4 had a 5-year CSS rates of 67.2%, 45.3%, 29.0%, and 10.6%, respectively (0 vs. 1 [P < 0.001], 1 vs. 2 [P = 0.031] and 2 vs. 3/4 [P = 0.004]). The median survival times for SPS 0, SPS 1, SPS 2 and SPS 3/4 were 68.7, 47.1, 28.3 and 16.3 months, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve for SPS was higher than other markers (P < 0.001). Furthermore, a nomogram that integrated TNM stage, tumor location and SPS exhibited superior discrimination power compared with the TNM stage alone (C-index, 0.714 vs. 0.630, respectively; P < 0.001).
Conclusion: The preoperative SPS combining inflammatory, nutritional and tumor markers independently predicted postoperative survival in stage II-III GC patients treated with adjuvant chemotherapy.
Keywords: Adjuvant chemotherapy; Gastric cancer; Nomogram; Prognosis; SPS.
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