THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PREOPERATIVE NUTRITIONAL STATE AND NON-SPECIFIC IMMUNITY IN GASTRIC CANCER PATIENTS

Abstract

In patients with gastric cancer undergoing initial operation, the correlation between the albumin level as the index for preoperative nutritional state and the non-specific immunity was studied in consideration of the degree of advancement. The subjects were 69 cases operated on from February 1985 till December 1988, and the albumin level and 12 non-specific immunity parameters were measured before operation. There were multiple correlations between the preoperative albumin level and non-specific immunity parameters, and the correlation coefficient was as high as 0.8237 in the patient group in stage III+IV. PHA·ConA lymphocyte blastogenetic reaction in the stage I+II group and the WBC·PPD intradermal reaction in the stage III+IV group were highly contributing parameters. That is, in the stage I+II group, it was found that the function of PHA was more contributable than the number of helper T-cells, and the function of Con A did than the number of suppressor T-cells, to the preoperative albumin level. While in the stage III+IV group, the contribution of the entire cellular immunity was great. Improvement of nutritional state and the preoperative immunotherapy are expected to be of help to the surgical therapeutics.