Application of Circulating Genetically Abnormal Cells in the Early-stage Diagnosis of Lung Cancer

Abstract Background Lung cancer is the primary cause of cancer related death worldwide, early detection of the disease contributes to early diagnosis and reduce the incidence of death from lung cancer. Therefore, an effective and non-invasive method for early diagnosis of lung cancer is urgently needed.Methods To evaluate the diagnostic performance of circulating genetically abnormal cells(CAC) in early lung cancer, a total of 63 participants who completed CAC detection by ZHUHAI SANMED BIOTECH INC. and obtained pathological results from January to December 2020 were included in our study, which were divided into 50 cases of lung cancer ,13 cases of benign lung disease. The levels of lung cancer-related markers in peripheral blood and chest computed tomography(CT) imaging characteristics of these patients were collected before pathological acquisition.Results The positive rate of CAC was 90.0% in lung cancer group and 23.1% in benign lung disease group, the difference was statistically significant (P＜0.01).The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of CAC was 0.837, the sensitivity was 90%, and the specificity was 76.9%.The area under the ROC curve and sensitivity were both higher than the combined or single serum tumor marker test.Conclusions This study preliminarily concludes that CAC, as a non-invasive test, has high sensitivity and specificity for early diagnosis of lung cancer, which is expected to help early detection of disease in lung cancer patients and has certain help and guiding significance for clinical work.