Is Fibrinogen an Effective Marker for Predicting Mortality in Patients with Gastric Cancer?

We aimed to determine the parameters that affect the mortality of patients operated on for gastric cancer and to investigate whether fibrinogen affects mortality or not. This retrospective clinical study included patients who underwent surgery due to gastric adenocarcinoma between January 2011 and January 2014. Patients’ demographic data, laboratory values, (hemogram parameters, fibrinogen, albumin, and tumor markers), operations, lymph node dissections, parameters of histopathology reports, stages, mortality/survival status, metastasis status at follow-up, and admission/operation/follow-up were obtained from the hospital automation system and recorded using the statistical software. Patients were divided into two groups: deceased and survivors. Analyses were carried out to determine whether the parameters of the patients, including fibrinogen, affected survival. A total of 130 patients were included in the study. Of the patients, 91 were men and 39 were women. The mean age of the patients was 63.99 SD 11.22 years. The results of the analysis of the patients’ parameters revealed that the presence of lymphatic invasion, lymph node positivity, high metastatic lymph node ratio, and advanced stage were statistically significantly correlated with low survival (p<0.05). A statistically significant correlation was found between the increase in patient age and high fibrinogen levels (p<0.05). High N stage, high grade, presence of lymphatic invasion, presence of metastasis at diagnosis, and high fibrinogen levels were found to be independent risk factors for gastric cancer mortality. It was concluded that patients with high fibrinogen levels had higher mortality rates in the early period of follow-up.