The effect of clinical and biochemical markers on prognosis of patients diagnosed with gastrointestinal stromal tumor

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors are the most observed mesenchymal tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. It may have symptoms such as abdominal pain, bleeding, and abdominal mass or it can be detected incidentally. It is most commonly observed in the stomach and small intestine. The only known curative treatment is still surgery with negative surgical margins. Imatinib can be used as a medical treatment. In cases with imatinib resistance, sunitinib can be preferred as a second line and regorafenib as a third line. The aim of this study is to identify prognostic markers that can help in the follow-up of the disease, give clinicians an idea about treatment options and disease progression, and compare them with the current literature. In our study, demographic, clinical, pathological, biochemical markers and their effects on prognosis of 70 patients with GIST who were followed up and admitted to Pamukkale University Medical Faculty Hospital between January 2010 and December 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. In our study, the majority of our patients were over the age of 50 and we had more male patients. The most common tumor location was stomach. Most of our patients were at high risk according to the AFIP classification. We found both overall survival and progression-free survival longer in patients who underwent surgery than in patients who could not underwent surgery. There was a statistically significant correlation between overall survival, progression-free survival and stage. It was found that the presence of colon-located GIST on progression-free survival was found to a negative risk. Adjuvant imatinib treatment had a positive effect on progression-free survival. In our study, we could not detect a significant relationship between biochemical markers (LDH, Albumin, NLR, PLR, PNI, Ca 19-9, CRP/ALB, LDH/ALB) and prognosis and overall survival. However, we found a positive effect of elevated LDH/Albumin levels on progression-free survival in patients with metastatic GIST. As a result, in this study; A number of parameters have been identified that may be effective for survival in patients with GIST and may provide implications for clinicians. This study highlights that gastrointestinal stromal tumors are a heterogeneous disease with many different predictive and prognostic variables. The number of patients evaluated in our study does not constitute a large sample. More studies involving more patients are needed to reveal the reasons for the different results in the literature. Keywords: Gastrointestinal stromal tumor, survival, prognosis, imatinib