Prognostic value of preoperative serum tumor markers in gastric cancer

Table 2 Correlation between tumor makers and major clinicopathologic characteristics of 363 patients with gastric cancer n (%)

Patient characteristics	Cases	CEA (+)	P	CA19-9 (+)	P	CA50 (+)	P
Age (yr)			< 0.001		0.213		0.134
< 60	169 (46.6)	26 (15.4)		36 (21.7)		40 (28.4)
≥ 60	194 (53.4)	61 (31.4)		31 (16.5)		31 (20.8)
Gender			0.022		0.800		0.375
Male	266 (73.3)	72 (27.1)		48 (18.6)		48 (23.1)
Female	97 (26.7)	15 (15.5)		19 (19.8)		23 (28.0)
Tumor size (cm)			0.007		0.042		0.051
< 6	243 (66.9)	48 (19.8)		38 (16.0)		40 (20.9)
≥ 6	120 (33.1)	39 (32.5)		29 (25.0)		31 (31.3)
Tumor location			0.463		0.737		0.662
Cardia or fundus	117 (33.1)	33 (28.2)		21 (18.6)		20 (22.0)
Corpus or angulus	131 (37.1)	31 (23.7)		22 (17.2)		26 (25.2)
Antrum	103 (29.2)	21 (20.4)		22 (21.8)		24 (28.2)
Whole stomach	2 (0.6)	1 (50.0)		0 (0.0)		0 (0.0)
Differentiation			0.65		0.671		0.701
Well/moderate	61 (16.8)	16 (26.2)		10 (16.9)		10 (22.2)
Poorly	302 (83.2)	71 (23.5)		57 (19.3)		61 (24.9)
T category			0.018		0.058		0.308
pT1-pT2	48 (13.2)	5 (10.4)		4 (8.7)		7 (17.9)
pT3-pT4	315 (86.8)	82 (26.0)		63 (20.5)		64 (25.5)
N category			0.109		< 0.001		0.001
pN0	61 (16.8)	14 (23.0)		10 (16.7)		10 (21.3)
pN1	73 (20.1)	10 (13.7)		5 (6.9)		10 (16.9)
pN2	100 (27.5)	29 (29.0)		12 (12.5)		10 (13.5)
pN3	129 (35.5)	34 (26.4)		40 (31.7)		41 (37.3)
Vascular/nerves invasion			0.997		0.950		0.763
Negative	171 (47.1)	41 (24.0)		31 (18.8)		30 (23.6)
Positive	192 (52.9)	46 (24.0)		36 (19.0)		41 (25.2)
AJCC stage			0.347		0.084		0.187
I	2 (0.6)	0 (0.0)		0 (0.0)		0 (0.0)
II	97 (26.7)	19 (19.6)		11 (11.7)		13 (17.6)
III	264 (72.7)	68 (25.8)		56 (21.7)		58 (27.1)

AJCC: American Joint Committee on Cancer; CEA: Carcinoembryonic antigen.