Prognostic significance of preoperative and postoperative CK19 and CEA mRNA levels in peripheral blood of patients with gastric cardia cancer

Table 2 Correlation between the preoperative and postoperative carcinoembryonic antigen mRNA levels and clinicopathological features in 129 patients with gastric cardia cancer n (%)

Clinicopathological feature	Cases	CEA mRNA level (pre-)		χ2 test		CEA mRNA level (post-)		χ2 test
		Low	High	χ2	P value	Low	High	χ2	P value
Gender				1.891	0.169			1.327	0.249
Male	102	38 (37.3)	64 (62.7)			44 (43.1)	58 (56.9)
Female	27	14 (51.9)	13 (48.1)			15 (55.6)	12 (44.4)
Age (yr)				0.413	0.521			1.121	0.290
≤ 60	59	22 (37.3)	37 (62.7)			24 (40.7)	35 (59.3)
> 60	70	30 (42.9)	40 (57.1)			35 (50.0)	35 (50.0)
Tumor size (cm)				0.078	0.780			5.757	0.016
≤ 4	75	31 (41.3)	44 (58.7)			41 (54.7)	34 (45.3)
> 4	54	21 (38.9)	33 (61.1)			18 (33.3)	36 (66.7)
Histological grade				3.024	0.082			2.423	0.12
Well/moderately differentiated	99	44 (44.4)	55 (55.6)			49 (49.5)	50 (50.5)
Poorly differentiated/undifferentiated	30	8 (26.7)	22 (73.3)			10 (33.3)	20 (66.7)
Depth of tumor invasion				4.653	0.031			0.966	0.326
T1-T2	34	19 (55.9)	15 (44.1)			18 (52.9)	16 (47.1)
T3-T4	95	33 (34.7)	62 (65.3)			41 (43.2)	54 (56.8)
Lymph node status				9.871	0.002			7.012	0.008
Negative	78	40 (51.3)	38 (48.7)			43 (55.1)	35 (44.9)
Positive	51	12 (23.5)	39 (76.5)			16 (31.4)	35 (68.6)
TNM stage				6.063	0.048			7.379	0.025
I	11	6 (54.5)	5 (45.5)			9 (81.8)	2 (18.2)
II	75	35 (46.7)	40 (53.3)			34 (45.3)	41 (54.7)
III	43	11 (25.6)	32 (74.4)			16 (37.2)	27 (62.8)

CK19: Cytokeratin 19; CEA: Carcinoembryonic antigen; TNM: Tumor-node-metastasis.