Abstract
PURPOSE: The relationship between high blood glucose and colorectal cancer (CRC) has been studied, but the role of postoperative fasting blood glucose (FBG) in patients with a prior normal FBG has never been addressed. METHODS: A total of 120 CRC patients staged I-III were enrolled, and the prognostic value of postoperative FBG for disease-free survival (DFS) was determined by Kaplan-Meier analysis. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to test other clinicopathological parameters, including preoperative hemoglobin (HGB) and the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR). RESULTS: By a cut-off point of 5.11 mmol/L, 51 and 69 patients were divided into low postoperative FBG (<5.11 mmol/L) and high postoperative FBG (≥5.11 mmol/L) groups, respectively. A high postoperative FBG was more common in older age (P = 0.01), left-located tumor (P = 0.02), smaller tumor diameter (P = 0.01), node negative involvement (P = 0.01), lesser positive lymph nodes (P = 0.02), and high preoperative HGB (P = 0.01). Further, high postoperative FBG patients displayed a significantly better DFS than low postoperative FBG patients (48.80 ± 22.12 months vs. 40.06 ± 24.36 months, P = 0.04), but it was less likely to be an independent prognostic factor. CONCLUSIONS: Postoperative FBG plays a temporal prognostic role for patients with stage I-III CRC with a prior normal FBG, but it is not an independent prognostic factor.