Effects of laparoscopic radical surgery in the treatment of colorectal cancer and correlations of VEGF and TGF-β1 with prognosis

To investigate the effects of laparoscopic radical surgery on the treatment of colorectal cancer (CRC) and explore the correlations of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) with prognosis. The clinical data of 210 patients with CRC admitted to the Yantai Zhifu Hospital from February 2015 to February 2018 were analyzed retrospectively. Among them, 110 patients were treated with laparoscopic radical surgery and assigned to the observation group, and the rest 100 patients were treated with routine open surgery and included in the open group. The two groups were compared in terms of operation time (OT), intraoperative blood loss (IBL), postoperative exhaust time (PET), length of hospital stays (LOS) and incidence of complications. Patients were also followed up for 3 years to count their survival rates. Serum expression levels of VEGF and TGF-β1, detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), were compared before and after treatment, and their correlations with patients' clinicopathological data and prognosis were analyzed. Compared with the open group, patients in the observation group had longer OT, but lower IBL, PET, LOS, and overall incidence of complications. In the observation group, VEGF and TGF-β1 expression after treatment was remarkably lower than that before treatment and that in the open group. A 3-year survival rate of 80.0% was observed in the observation group. Univariate analysis showed that serum VEGF and TGF-β1 expression levels were closely related to Dukes staging and lymph node metastasis (LNM) (