The prognostic value of thrombocytosis in newly diagnosed lung cancer patients: a retrospective analysis

Purpose: The importance of thrombocyte count as a prognostic factor has not been adequately investigated in patients with lung cancer We retrospectively examined the value of thrombocytosis as a prognostic factor and investigated its relationship with other clinicopathologic factors and survival. Methods: The medical records of 260 patients with lung cancer were reviewed. Pretreatment thrombocyte count, histopathological diagnosis, disease stage, gender, age, performance status (PS), thrombotic episodes, weight loss and paraneoplastic syndromes were recorded. Overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) and disease-free survival (DFS) were evaluated in all patient subgroups. Thrombocytosis was defined as platelet count >400,000/mu l. We assessed statistically the possible correlation between thrombocytosis, other clinicopathologic factors and survival parameters. A two-sided p value < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: There were no statistically significant differences between histological subgroups (small cell/SCLC and non-small cell/NSCLC) according to age, disease stage and gender Sixty-six (25.38%) patients had thrombocytosis before starting treatment. We found no relationship between thrombocytosis and disease stage, gender age, PS and thrombotic episodes. Thrombocytosis was significantly correlated only with weight loss (p=0.011) and paraneoplastic syndromes (p=0.027). OS was shorter in the thrombocytosis group, but without statistical significance. PFS and DFS did not differ between thrombocytemic and non-thrombocytemic patients. Conclusion: Pretreatment thrombocytosis is not an independent prognostic factor of survival in lung cancer patients and is related with paraneoplastic syndromes.