Pretreatment Plasma D-dimer and Albumin Levels in ESCC

As a part of clinical routine examinations, pretreatment plasma D-dimer levels, serum albumin levels, and CRP levels were measured 24 h to 1 week before surgery. Plasma D-dimer values were analyzed by a latex-enhanced immunoturbidimetric assay and a Sysmex CA 7000 system (Sysmex Corporation, Japan) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Serum albumin levels and CRP levels were measured by using a Hitachi 7600-020 automatic biochemical analyzer (Hitachi, Japan). The optimal cutoff values of D-dimer and albumin in our study were verified using Youden’s index (YI) from the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for ESCC prediction. The survival status was inserted into the YI to define the cutoff value as described by Huang et al. [22 (link)] and Liu et al. [23 (link)]. A high level of preoperative plasma D-dimer was defined as ≥0.5 μg/mL, and a low level of preoperative serum albumin was defined as <43.8 g/L.