CEA and CA19-9 are widely performed as indicators for early diagnosis and postoperative follow-up of GC in clinical practice. Studies have shown that a single tumor marker has lower sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer compared to the combination of multiple tumor markers (Wang et al. 2016; He et al. 2013; Toyoda et al. 2012). Besides, the detection of serum CEA and CA19-9 have a high priority in terms of cost, invasiveness, and availability, therefore, we examined the prognostic value of the combination of CEA and CA19-9 for GC through multicenter data. Most previous studies focused on the level of pre- and postoperative tumor markers, and there is still no consensus on which can better predict the prognosis of GC (Kodera et al. 1996; Jing et al. 2020; Zhang et al. 2017). However, there are few researches shown the impact of the increment of postoperative CEA and CA19-9 on the prognosis compared to the preoperative levels. In our study, we assessed the prognostic value of the increment of postoperative CEA and CA19-9 in non-metastatic GC, and confirmed its superiority of prognosis compare to the level of preoperative CEA and CA19-9. In addition, we utilized independent prognostic factors including T stage, N stage, tumor differentiation, NLR, number of incremental tumor markers after surgery to establish the predictive nomogram. The nomogram showed satisfied prediction accuracy according to the internal and external validation.
Currently, several researches have shown that pre- and postoperative tumor markers are associated with prognosis of GC, but there had always been a contradiction in which had better predictive reliability compared to the another. Lin et al. (2020) and Uda et al.(2018) found that preoperative tumor markers had better prognostic value than postoperative tumor markers. Nevertheless, Suenaga et al.(2019) pointed out that the postoperative CEA and CA19-9 were independent prognostic factors for patients with stage II/III GC, while the preoperative values were not. Such opposing conclusion might be related to their different inclusion criteria and variable classification methods. However, there were only 46 (11.2%) and 29 (7.1%) patients respectively with positive CEA and CA19-9 in the discovery cohort. Limited by the number of patients with positive postoperative tumor markers, we could not compare the prognostic value of postoperative tumor markers levels with post-preoperative tumor markers increments.
The increment of postoperative tumor markers might be related to the residual minute cancer tissue during surgery or the presence of micrometastasis that cannot be recognized by imaging examination (Toyoda et al. 2012; Kanda et al. 2018). In our group study, we found that prognosis of patients with positive preoperative CEA and without postoperative increment was significantly better than that of patients with negative preoperative CEA and postoperative increment, but was inferior to those with negative CEA and without postoperative increment (Fig. 1A). Meanwhile, the analysis of CA19-9 had similar results, except that there was no significant difference in the survival curve between patients with positive preoperative CA19-9 and without postoperative increment and those with negative preoperative CA19-9 and without postoperative increment (Fig. 1B). According to these conclusions, regardless of the level of preoperative tumor makers, the increment of postoperative tumor markers implied a worse prognosis. Based on the t-ROC curves, we confirmed that post-preoperative tumor markers increment had a better prognostic ability for GC. In the end, we validated the feasibility of the addition of postoperative tumor markers increment into the prognostic models. Lin et al.(2018) suggested that the including of CEA/CA19-9 level in AJCC TNM staging system could improve the prediction accuracy of stage III GC outcome. Back in 2000, the Working Group of AJCC recommended incorporating serum CEA level into the TNM staging of colon cancer (Compton et al. 2000). The effectiveness of this improvement method has been verified by Zhou et al.(2021). This was the first study to incorporate the increment of postoperative CEA/CA19-9 into prognostic model for predicting OS in patients with GC. Inflammation ratios were regarded as basilic feature of cancer. NLR had been reported as a prognostic factor and one of the reference indicators for postoperative adjuvant therapy in GC (Li et al. 2017; Nechita et al. 2022; Miyamoto et al. 2018). Analogously, we validated that NLR is an independent predictor for GC outcome.
Current guidelines recommended a regular detection of CEA/CA19-9 every 3–6 months in patients after radical resection of GC (Lordick et al. 2022; Wang et al. 2021). However, guidelines do not provide an indication for individual follow-up and adjuvant therapy intensity. Our results indicated that the increment of postoperative CEA/CA19-9 may inform the frequency and degree of follow-up. For instance, once the increment of CEA/CA19-9 was detected after surgery, more detailed examinations as CT should be considered to identify recurrence, and more frequent testing of serum CEA/CA19-9 is recommended.
There are several limitations of this study. First, the inherent limitation and biases of retrospective research. For example, part of patients did not accept the blood tests after surgery. Patients who accepted postoperative tumor markers testing were more inclined towards advanced GC. Second, due to the relatively short follow-up duration, the credibility of the nomogram in predicting 5-years OS might be affected. Besides, the time limit for measuring postoperative tumor markers was not controlled. The span of within six months after surgery and before starting chemotherapy was a bit broad. Finally, we did not evaluate the prognostic value of postoperative tumor markers levels compare to post-preoperative tumor markers increments.
In conclusion, the prognostic value of post-preoperative CEA/CA19-9 increments exceed that of preoperative CEA/CA19-9 levels. The prognostic nomogram based on post-preoperative CEA/CA19-9 increments and other prognostic factors could provide effective information for postoperative management of GC patients to improve their prognosis. The detection of postoperative tumor markers requires more attention. Patients with incremental CEA/CA19-9 tend to worse outcome, and more aggressive surveillance strategy and treatments should be implemented.