Speaker
Description
Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most diagnosed and second most lethal cancer globally. The challenge of early detection is often due to non-specific or absent early symptoms. This leads to low detection rates and poor health outcomes, particularly in resource-limited settings including Ghana. This study evaluated the diagnostic performance of hematological parameters such as lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) and hemoglobin-platelet ratio (HPR), in pre-operative CRC patients in Ghana.
Method: This unmatched case-control study involved 50 CRC patients and 50 healthy controls. Blood samples were collected for full blood Count of participants using Beckmann780 analyzer. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and logistics regression model were used to assess the diagnostic accuracies of hematological parameters in detecting CRC. All statistical analyses were performed using R programming language. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: The mean age of CRC patients differed significantly from controls (55.92 ± 13.44 vs 37.92 ± 10.33 years, respectively) (p < 0.0001). Most CRC patients presented with changes in the bowl (48.0%) and bleeding per rectum (42.0%). CRC patients had significantly lower levels of LMR (p < 0.0001), HPR (p < 0.0001) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) (p < 0.05) compared to controls. At a cut-off of ≤ 0.068, HPR was the most effective diagnostic marker for detecting CRC, demonstrating a sensitivity of 81.6%, specificity of 98.0%, and a high area under the curve (AUC = 0.916, p < 0.0001).
Conclusion: The study identifies HPR as a potent diagnostic marker for CRC, offering a cost-effective and accurate tool, particularly valuable in resource-limited settings such as Ghana.
Keywords: Colorectal cancer, hemoglobin-platelet ratio, diagnostic utility