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[Could plasma D-dimer levels be a predictive marker for prognosis in lung cancer?]
Bahar Kurt, Özlem Kar Kurt1, Defne Kalaycı
1Department of Chest Diseases, Faculty of Medicine, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu, Turkey. aghhozlem@yahoo.com.
Introduction:
Plasma concentrations of circulatory markers of hemostatic activation which may be associated with tumor growth and dissemination have been shown to predict prognosis in malignancy. The present study was designed to investigate the prognostic value of plasma D-dimer level in lung cancer.
Materials And Methods:
Plasma levels of the D-dimer in 138 lung cancer patients [98 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), 40 small cell lung cancer (SCLC)] were measured before the initiation of any therapy and each chemotherapy.
Results:
There were 124 (89.9%) men and 14 (10.1%) women with a mean age of 62.8 years (range 38-84). There were no statistically significant differences among the histopathologic types for NSCLC patients. Stage IIIA NSCLC group had statistically significant higher D-dimer level than stages I-II and IV. D-dimer levels were increased significantly after 4 cycles of chemotherapy in progressive disease. The median survival times in NSCLC patients were 26.6 months (95% CI, 17.6-35.6) and 15.9 months (95% CI, 4.2-27.7; p= 0.037) respectively, for patients with a low D-dimer level (≤ 1.2 ng/L) and a high D-dimer level (> 1.2 ng/L).With the cox-regression analysis, the plasma level of D-dimer and tumour stage were identified as independent predictive factors of the survival.
Conclusion:
These results suggest that plasmalevel of D-dimer can act as a predictive factor of decreased survival and a poor response to the treatment in lung cancer.
