Clinical Evaluation of Preoperative Measurement of the Serum Human Hepatocyte Growth Factor Levels in Patients of Gastric Cancer

Masami Niki, Kunio Okajima, Hiroshi Isozaki, Eiji Nakata, Tadashi Ichinona, Keizou Fujii, Eiji Nomura, Nobuyuki Izumi

Department of Surgery, Osaka Medical College

To clarify the role of hHGF in gastric cancer, we compared preoperative serum hHGF levels in 57 gastric cancer patients with clinicopathological factors. The results were as follows: 1) The serum hHGF concentration was significantly higher in patients with advanced gastric cancer than in those with early gastric cancer. 2) There were no significant differences between the histological type, stromal type and infiltrative growth type. 3) In advanced gastric cancer, its concentration was significantly higher in patients with lymphnode metastasis than in those without lymph node metastasis, and significantly higher in patients with liver metastasis than in those without liver metastasis, whereas there was no significant difference in serum hHGF levels between patients with and without peritoneal dissemination. These results suggest that preoperative measurement of the seurm hHGF concentration in patients with gastric cancer is useful for estimating the clinical stage of gastric cancer, and for the extent of distant metastasis to lymph nodes, and metastasis to the liver.

Key words
gastric cancer, tumor marker, hepatocyte growth factor, hematogenous and lyphnode metastasis of gastric cancer

Reprint requests
Masami Niki Department of Surgery, Osaka Medical College
2-7 Daigaku-cho, Takatsukishi, 569 JAPAN

Accepted
July 5, 1995

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