Pretreatment Serum Albumin Level is an Independent Prognostic Factor in Patients with Stage IIIB Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Study of the Turkish Descriptive Oncological Researches Group

Background: Several prognostic factors have been studied in NSCLC, although it is unknown which ismost useful. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether pre-treatment serum albumin level has prognosticvalue in patients with Stage IIIB NSCLC. Materials and
Methods: This cross-sectional study included a totalof 204 patients with Stage IIIB NSCLC who met the inclusion criteria. Pre-treatment serum albumin levels anddemographic, clinical, and histological characteristics, as well as laboratory variables were recorded. A cut-offvalue was defined for serum albumin level and the patients were stratified into four groups on thios basis.
Results:The majority of the patients was males and smokers, with a history of weight loss, and squamous histologicaltype of lung cancer. The mean serum albumin level was 3.2±1.7 g/dL (range, 2.11-4.36 g/dL). A cut-off value 3.11g/dL was set and among the patients with a lower level, 68% had adenocarcinoma and 82% were smokers. Thepatients with low serum albumin levels had a lower response rate to e first-line chemotherapy with a shorterprogression-free survival and overall survival. Multivariate analysis showed that low serum albumin level was anindependent poor prognostic factor for NSCLC.
Conclusions: This study results suggest that low serum albuminlevel is an independent poor prognostic factor in patients with Stage IIIB NSCLC, associated with reduction inthe response rate to first-line therapy and survival rates.