Reports of the CTM and preoperative level of CEA were found in 730 (664 retrospective and 66 prospective) patients with colorectal cancer. The possibility of improving the incidence of reporting was estimated by comparing the reporting frequency of both (retrospective and prospective) groups.
The percentage of reporting the involvement of the CTM was 46.08% and 81.81% for the retrospective group and the prospective group, respectively. The percentage of reporting the preoperative CEA levels was 40.9% and 68.7% for the retrospective and the prospective groups, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference in reporting both CTMs and the preoperative level of CEA between retrospective and prospective groups to the side of prospective group in which the p-value was <0.0001 for both groups.
There was inadequate reporting of both the CTM involvement and preoperative levels of CEA in the retrospective patients with statistically significant improvement of this reporting in patients in the prospective group. This may point to the unawareness of the importance of both in the prognosis of colorectal cancer, which may be because both are not involved in the widely used tumour, node, metastasis (TNM) staging system.