Association of preoperative serum HE4 levels on the survival of patients with endometrial cancer.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the association between preoperative serum human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) levels and survival outcomes in endometrial cancer (EC) patients.

METHODS

A retrospective cohort study was conducted of EC patients who were scheduled for surgery between September 2013 and May 2014 at Rajavithi Hospital. Association between preoperative serum HE4 levels and clinicopathological characteristics were evaluated. Cox proportional-hazards model was used to compare overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) between EC patients who had high serum HE4 levels and those who did not.

RESULTS

A total of 86 EC patients were enrolled. Serum HE4 levels was significantly associated with older age (p < 0.001), postmenopausal women (p = 0.001), large tumor size (p < 0.001), presence of lymphovascular invasion (p = 0.022), deep myometrial invasion (p = 0.001), lymph node metastasis (0.017), high-risk group (p < 0.001), and death status (p = 0.002). With a median follow-up of 53 months, the 3-years OS and PFS of EC patients who had high serum HE4 levels were significantly poorer than those who did not (71% vs 95.8%, and 67.7% vs 91.7%, respectively). A high serum HE4 level was a significant prognostic factor for OS and RFS from the univariate analysis. However, it was not a significant prognostic factor in the multivariate analysis.

CONCLUSION

Preoperative high serum HE4 levels were significantly associated with the worse clinicopathological characteristic of EC patients and decreased OS and RFS. Although there was no strong independent prognostic factor for survival, serum HE4 levels could be used in an algorithm for stratifying high-risk EC patients with more proper management.