Pathogens isolated from gastric cancer patients with postoperative pulmonary infection, risk factors and related predictive values

OBJECTIVE To explore the distribution of pathogens isolated from gastric cancer patients with postoperative pulmonary infection and analyze the risk factors and related predictive values. METHODS Totally 212 gastric cancer patients who received gastrectomy in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Luohe Medical College from Oct 2016 to May 2022 were recruited as the research subjects and were divided into the infection group with 36 cases and the non-infection group with 176 cases according to the status of postoperative pulmonary infection. The clinical data and the laboratory test indexes before surgery and after surgery for 24 hours were collected. The distribution of pathogens isolated from the patients of the infection group was observed, multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed for influencing factors for the postoperative infection in the gastric cancer patients, and the predictive values of the laboratory test indexes 24 hours after surgery were analyzed by means of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. RESULTS Totally 68 strains of pathogens were isolated from 36 sputum specimens, 46 (67.65%) of which were gram-negative bacteria, 26 (29.41%) were gram-positive bacteria, and 2 (2.94%) were fungi. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that diabetes mellitus, operation duration and catheter indwelling time were the risk factors for the postoperative pulmonary infection in the gastric cancer patients(P<0.05). The area under curve (AUC) of the joint detection of albumin (Alb), hemoglobin (Hb), C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) 24 hours after surgery was 0.884 in prediction of the postoperative pulmonary infection, with the sensitivity 90.33%, the specificity 86.54%. CONCLUSION The gram-negative bacteria are dominant among the pathogens isolated from the gastric cancer patients with postoperative pulmonary infection. The diabetes mellitus, operation duration and catheter indwelling time may increase the risk of postoperative pulmonary infection, and the joint detection of Alb, Hb, CRP and PCT 24 hours after surgery has high value in prediction of the postoperative pulmonary infection.