Influence of Preoperative Serum Aspartate Aminotransferase (AST) Level on the Prognosis of Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

The purpose of this work is to analyze preoperative serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) levels and their effect on the prognosis of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after surgical operation. These analyses were performed retrospectively in patients with NSCLC followed by surgery; participants were recruited between January 2004 and January 2008. All clinical information and laboratory results were collected from medical records. We explored the association between preoperative serum AST and recurrence-free survival (RFS), and the overall survival (OS) of NSCLC patients. Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox multivariate analysis, stratified by the AST median value, were used to evaluate the prognostic effect. A chi-squared test was performed to compare clinical characteristics in different subgroups. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. A total of 231 patients were enrolled. The median RFS and OS were 22 and 59 months, respectively. The AST levels were divided into two groups, using a cut-off value of 19 U/L: High AST (>19 U/L), n = 113 vs. low AST (≤19 U/L), n = 118. Multivariate analysis indicated that preoperative serum AST > 19 U/L (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.685, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.493-0.994, p = 0.046 for RFS, HR = 0.646, 95% CI: 0.438-0.954, p = 0.028 for OS) was an independent prognostic factor for both RFS and OS. High preoperative serum AST levels may serve as a valuable marker to predict the prognosis of NSCLC after operation.