Objective: To evaluate the clinical value between peritoneal lavage cytology (PLC) and prognosis of gastric cancer.
Methods: The peritoneal lavage fluid of 60 gastric cancer patients and 12 noncancer patients were collected, different methods were used to examine the exfoliated cancer cells, and relationships between positive results and relative clinicopathological parameters were evaluated.
Results: The positive rate of PLC was 31.8%, and was positively correlated with the degree of histologic differentiation of gastric cancer (P＜0.05), depth of invasion (P＜0.01), stage of TNM (P＜0.05), and lymph node metastasis (P＜0.05),but was not related to size of tumor (P>0.05). The postoperative oneyear recurrence and survival rates of the positive and negative groups were significantly different(P＜0.05 and P＜0.01).
Conclusions: PLC could act as a standard for judging the invasive and metastatic state of cases of gastric cancer and predicting prognosis.