Elevation of platelet count in patients with colorectal cancer predicts tendency to metastases and poor prognosis.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUNDS/AIMS: Thrombocytosis had been found to be associated with tumor metastasis and poor prognosis in malignant tumors including colorectal cancer (CRC). In the present study, we investigated the relationship between the platelet and the biological features in patients with CRC in China. METHODOLOGY: The correlation of platelet counts of 150 cases with CRC with their clinicopathological characteristics was explored. Furthermore, the survival impact of preoperative platelet count was also investigated. RESULTS: Statistically significant correlations between the platelet count and the lymph node and distance metastasis (p=0.016 and 0.014), vascular and perinural invasion (p=0.025 and 0.016) as well as TNM clinical stages (p=0.014) except for the age, gender and grades (p=0.245, 0.276 and 0.324, respectively) were found. In addition, 5-year survival of patients with high platelet count and normal platelet count were 13.30% and 56.30%, respectively (p=0.000). Meanwhile, concurrent with lymph node and distance metastasis, perinural invasion and clinical stages (p=0.000, 0.022, 0.034 and 0.000), platelet count (p=0.010) was also found to be an independent prognostic factor in CRC in our study through multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Elevated platelet might play some role in the progress of CRC and preoperative platelet count might be a prognostic indicator in the CRC patients.