[Bibliographic analysis of the use of laboratory blood parameters for the prognosis of primary lung cancer]

Abstract

In the daily clinical practice, serum calcium, albumin, and cyfra 21-1, are the only laboratory parameters officially recommended for the prognostic evaluation of primary lung cancer patients by the American, European or French respiratory/thoracic societies (and only in non-small cell lung cancer). The present review of the biomedical literature suggests that serum calcium for non operable non-small cell lung cancer, serum orosomucoid (alpha1-acid-glycoprotein) and serum cyfra 21-1 for non-small cell lung cancer, and perhaps plasma prothrombin time, might be the best laboratory parameters for the pre-therapeutic prognostic evaluation of the lung cancer patients, independently from the usual radio-clinical and histological parameters. Further prognostic evaluation studies are necessary in order notably to compare the prognostic values of the aforementioned parameters, not only aimed at evaluating the value of their pre-therapeutic levels, but also aimed at evaluating the value of their post-therapeutic changes. A higher pluridisciplinarity for such future publications also seem necessary.