Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Aug 15, 2025; 17(8): 108007
Published online Aug 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i8.108007
Tumor markers and multimodal magnetic resonance imaging in predicting rectal cancer stage and differentiation
Peng Wang, Jun Han, Wen-Na Zhao, Fan Wu, Sheng-He Zhang, Yi-Juan Huang
Peng Wang, Department of Infectious Diseases, First Hospital of Jiaxing, Jiaxing 314000, Zhejiang Province, China
Jun Han, Wen-Na Zhao, Fan Wu, Sheng-He Zhang, Yi-Juan Huang, Department of Radiology, First Hospital of Jiaxing, Jiaxing 314000, Zhejiang Province, China
Co-first authors: Peng Wang and Jun Han.
Author contributions: Wang P and Han J conducted the conceptualization, data organization, methodology, software, and writing of the original manuscript; they contributed equally to this article and are the co-first authors of this manuscript; Zhao WN, Wu F, and Zhang SH performed formal analysis, project management, and visualization; Huang YJ performed research, supervision, validation, writing, review and editing; all authors thoroughly reviewed and endorsed the final manuscript.
Supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China, No. LTGY24H160006; and Jiaxing Medical Key Discipline, No. 2023-ZC-015.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the Jiaxing First Hospital Committee, approval No. 2025-LP-215.
Informed consent statement: All study participants or their legal guardian provided informed written consent about personal and medical data collection prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: The technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset are available from the corresponding author at huangyijuan2006@zjxu.edu.cn. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yi-Juan Huang, MD, Department of Radiology, First Hospital of Jiaxing, No. 1882 Central South Road, Nanhu District, Jiaxing 314000, Zhejiang Province, China. huangyijuan2006@zjxu.edu.cn
Received: April 22, 2025
Revised: May 23, 2025
Accepted: July 8, 2025
Published online: August 15, 2025
Processing time: 113 Days and 15.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This study included 167 rectal cancer patients who underwent serological tests and multimodal magnetic resonance imaging. Results showed significant concordance between magnetic resonance imaging and pathological T-staging. Combined use of tumor markers (alpha-fetoprotein cancer antigen 72-4, carbohydrate antigen 19-9, and carcinoembryonic antigen) and magnetic resonance imaging had high sensitivity/specificity for staging/differentiation, outperforming single tests, thus enhancing diagnostic accuracy for clinical practice.