Impact of C-reactive protein on prognosis of patients with colorectal carcinoma.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of preoperative serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level as a prognostic indicator in patients with colorectal carcinoma (CRC). We investigated the correlation between preoperative CRP level and clinicopathological factors including prognosis of 167 patients who underwent resection for CRC retrospectively. Clinicopathological variables were compared between patients with serum CRP levels >1mg/dL (29 patients; high-CRP group) and patients with serum CRP levels <1mg/dL (138 patients; low-CRP group). In high-CRP group, 9 patients were stage I+II and 20 patients ware stage III+IV. In low-CRP group, 93 patients were stage I+II and 45 patients were stage III+IV. There were significant differences in the clinical stage, tumor diameter, curativity, final stage between the two groups (p<0.01). The overall survival and recurrence-free survival rates in high-CRP group were lower compared with the rates in low-CRP group (p<0.05 and p=0.14). In addition, the overall survival rate in stage I+II patients with high-CRP was significantly lower than that in patients with low-CRP (p<0.05). Using multivariate analysis, the preoperative elevation of serum CRP level was an independent prognostic factor in patients with CRC (p<0.05). We found that the preoperative elevation of serum CRP to be an independent prognostic indicator of CRC.