Clinical implications of CT-detected ascites in gastric cancer: association with peritoneal metastasis and systemic inflammatory response

Objectives This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic significance of computed tomography (CT) detected ascites in gastric cancer (GC) with peritoneal metastasis (PM) and investigate its association with systemic inflammatory response. Methods This retrospective study included 111 GCs with ascites (PM: n = 51; No PM: n = 60). Systemic inflammatory indexes, tumor markers, and the CT-assessed characteristics of ascites were collected. The differences in parameters between the two groups were analyzed. Diagnostic performance was obtained by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. The association between the volume of ascites and clinical characteristics was evaluated with correlation analysis. Results In this study, over half of GCs with ascites were not involved with PM. The systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), five tumor markers, and the characteristics of ascites showed significant differences between the two groups (all p