Effect of preoperative hyperfibrinogenemia on recurrence of colorectal cancer without a systemic inflammatory response.

Abstract

Disorders in the blood coagulation system are often associated with malignancy. Patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) have been shown to have abnormal data for various coagulation tests. We retrospectively analyzed the relation between the preoperative plasma fibrinogen level and tumor recurrence in 569 patients with CRC who underwent curative surgical resection and were followed up without adjuvant chemotherapy. The plasma fibrinogen level showed a positive association with tumor recurrence, age, sex, T stage, and TNM classification. When divided with the median value, hyperfibrinogenemia is positively correlated with tumor recurrence, although it lost independence in the multivariate analysis. In the C-reactive protein (CRP)-negative population, hyperfibrinogenemia is independently correlated with tumor recurrence and recurrence-free survival. In contrast, hyperfibrinogenemia has no effect on recurrence in CRP-positive patients. Hyperfibrinogenemia is clinically relevant in tumor recurrence before a systemic inflammatory response and thus can be a useful predictor of recurrence in the preinflammatory stage of CRC.