Impact of time from diagnosis to chemotherapy in advanced gastric cancer: A Propensity Score Matching Study to Balance Prognostic Factors

Table 4 Using 1:1 propensity score matching including C-reactive protein level, Alb level, and the administration of combination chemotherapy, we obtained a total of 48 matched patients in the early and elective waiting time groups (this table shows the characteristics of the propensity-matched patients with advanced gastric cancer)

	Propensity-matched cohort
Characteristics	Early WT	Elective WT	P value
No.	24	24
Disease status Unresectable/recurrent	23/1	20/4	0.3475
Waiting time (WT), d, median (IQR)	12 (8, 13)	22.5 (19.3, 33.8)	< 0.0001
Male sex, n, %	18, 75%	18, 75%	1.0000
Age, years, median (IQR)	68 (61, 72)	73.5 (63, 79)	0.1635
BMI, median (IQR)	20.7 (18.8, 22.5)	20.9 (19.3, 23.2)	0.5727
Diabetes mellitus, n, %	3, 13%	3, 13%	1.0000
Hypertension, n, %	10, 42%	9, 39%	1.0000
Dementia, n, %	1, 4%	1, 4%	1.000
Chronic kidney disease, n, %	9, 38%	10 42%	0.7702
Charlson comorbidity index score, median (IQR)	0 (0, 0)	0 (0, 0)	0.9611
Low/medium/high/missing	20, 2, 2, 0	19, 3, 1, 1	0.7348
PS 0-1, n, %	23, 96%	20, 87%	0.5347
Histology type, intestinal, n, %	8, 33%	12, 50%	0.3442
HER 2 IHC 3+< or FISH (+), n, %	7, 29%	8, 33%	1.0000
Gastric cardia tumor site, n, %	2, 8%	7, 29%	0.1365
Target lesion, n, %	23, 96%	19, 86%	0.3364
No. of metastatic lesions ≤ 1	9, 38%	10, 42%	0.8541
CEA, median (IQR)	6.7 (2.2, 91)	8.8 (4.9, 75.5)	0.7175
CA19-9, median (IQR)	86 (3, 851)	27 (7, 6583)	0.6282
Hb, g/dL, median (IQR)	11.3 (9.7, 12.9)	11 (7.7, 12.3)	0.5226
Alb, g/dL, median (IQR)	3.3 (2.9, 3.6)	3.2 (3, 3.7)	0.8848
CRP, mg/dL, median (IQR)	0.59 (0.26, 1.97)	0.48 (0.13, 1.94)	0.5707
NLR, median (IQR)	3.9 (3.0, 6.7)	3.1 (2.4, 5.0)	0.1576
Monotherapy; combination	7; 17	7; 17	1.0000

Chronic renal disease is defined as an eGFR (estimated glomerular filtration rate) < 60 mL/min. The Charlson comorbidity index encompasses 19 medical conditions weighted 1-6 with total scores ranging from 0-37. For each condition, the scores reflected the risk as follows: 0, low; 1-2, medium; 3-4, high; and ≥ 5, very high risk. IQR: Interquartile range; Alb: Albumin; CRP: C-reactive protein; NLR: Neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio.