Is the Complete Blood Count Parameters Predict Prognosis Before Treatment in Metastatic Gastric Cancer Patients

introduction: Gastric cancer is one of the leading cause of death both in men and women. More than two-thirds of the patients were diagnosed in advanced stage. Metastatic gastric cancer has a poor prognosis with a reiative 5-years-survivai rate of %7. In the previous reports, hematological parameters including ieukocyte, thrombocyte counts and ratios between them had been used as prognostic indicators in several tumor types. The aim of the current study was to determine vvhether hematological parameters tike neutrophils, iymphocyte or thrombocyte counts and thrombocyte-iymphocyte ratio (TLR), neutrophii-iymphocyte ratio (NLR) before treatment might predict survival in metastatic gastric cancer. Patients and Methods: A total of 112 patients with metastatic gastric cancer treated and followed-up from 2004 to 2008 were anaiyzed. Hematological parameters measured before treatment were obtained from patients chart and evaluated retrospectively. NLR and TLR were calculated from pre-treatment complete blood counts. Correlation betvveen parameters and survival were made by using log-rank and Kaplan-Meier tests. Results: For 112 patients with metastatic gastric cancer, 2-years survival rate and median survival time were 17% and 12 months, respectively. Although thrombocytosis (> 300.000), TLR (> 160), lymphopenia ( 2.56) had been found predict poor survival time, it was not shown statistically significant. Conclusion: In present study we could not find any significant correlation between survival and hematological parameters in patients with metastatic gastric cancer, hovevver, further studies including larger sample size may be recuired to clarify the prognostic value of pre-treatment peripheral blood counts.