Hamburg-Glasgow classification: preoperative staging by combination of disseminated tumour load and systemic inflammation in oesophageal carcinoma

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to establish a new preoperative staging classification and evaluate its comparability to the post-operative tumour stage, lymph node invasion and metastasis (TNM) classification. To date, adequate, preoperative staging in patients with oesophageal carcinoma (EC) is still missing but urgently needed. Systemic inflammation and disseminated tumour load have a pivotal role in recurrence and oncological outcome. To improve the clinical staging, we merged the Glasgow Prognostic Score (GPS) and disseminated tumour cells (DTC) into a new sufficient preoperative staging classification, the Hamburg-Glasgow classification (HGC). METHODS: In this prospective, single-centre study, 326 patients following curative oesophagectomy were included. From all patients preoperative bone marrow was aspirated from the iliac crest to detect DTCs by immunostaining with the pan-keratin antibody A45-B/B3. HGC was subdefined into four prognostic groups on the basis of C-reactive protein (CRP), albumin and DTC. The three prognostic groups of the GPS were supplemented by DTC detection status. Results were correlated with clinicopathological parameters and clinical outcome. RESULTS: Increasing HGC significantly correlated with lymph node invasion (P=0.022), post-operative pathohistological TNM staging (P=0.001) and tumour recurrence (P=0.001). The four HGC prognostic groups displayed a gradual decrease in overall as well as disease-free survival (P<0.001, each). Hamburg-Glasgow classification was a strong, significant independent predictor of overall survival and disease-free survival (P<0.001, both) in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Hamburg-Glasgow classification seems to be a promising preoperative additive staging classification for accurate and simple outcome stratification.