Prognostic significance of vascular endothelial growth factor expression in gastric carcinoma: a meta-analysis

Purpose The purpose of this study was to comprehensively and quantitatively summarize available evidences for the use of VEGF protein to evaluate the clinicopathological and prognostic role of VEGF expression in Asian patients with gastric cancer. Method Searches were applied to MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library databases until June 2010, without language restrictions. A meta-analysis was performed to clarify the impact of VEGF expression on clinicopathological parameters or over survival (OS) in gastric cancer. Results Our combined results showed that VEGF expression in Asian patients with gastric cancer was significantly higher in the case-control studies (1,194 patients and 1,618 controls) (odds ratio [OR] = 112.41, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 64.12-197.06). All the analyses estimated favored a stronger link between the high VEGF expression and the poor 5-year overall survival (1,236 patients) (risk ratio [RR] = 2.45, 95% CI = 2.11-2.83, P = 0.000). When stratifying the studies by the pathological variables, the depth of invasion (3,094 patients) (OR = 1.95, 95% CI = 1.40-2.71, P = 0.000), lymph node metastasis (3,240 patients) (OR = 1.82, 95% CI = 1.29-2.57, P = 0.001), distant metastasis (1,980 patients) (OR = 2.76, 95% CI = 1.22-6.25, P = 0.015), vascular invasion (1,803 patients) (OR = 2.61, 95% CI = 2.09-3.27, P = 0.000), and TNM stage (1,819 patients) (OR = 1.92, 95% CI = 1.57-2.36, P = 0.000) provided significant prognostic information. Conclusion Our results indicate that VEGF can potently predict the overall survival in Asian patients with gastric cancer. Importantly, VEGF may be converted from candidate to the routine clinical setting for clinicians to predict the outcome of single patient with gastric carcinoma.