Preoperative blastformation rate in gastrointestinal cancer patients.

The rate of blastformation of peripheral blood lymphocytes in response to stimulation by phytohemagglutinin (PHA) was assessed preoperatively in 393 patients with gastrointestinal cancer. The series consisted of 291 cases of gastric cancer and 102 cases of colon cancer, all patients being under 70 years of age. The blastformation rate was related to the stage of cancer ground at operation. Preoperative blastformation rates for both colon cancer and gastric cancer decreased as the cancer progressed. With Stage I gastric cancer 81.4% of those that underwent curative resection had preoperative blastformation rates greater than 40%. However, the number of those with blastformation rates over 40% decreased markedly in the curative cases of gastric cancer Stage II to stage IV. Eighty three percent of cases that underwent curative resection with colon cancer, including advanced cancer, had preoperative blastformation rates of over 40%. These results indicated that the correlation of the preoperative blastformation rate with success of curative resection better for colon cancer than for gastric cancer.