A statistically significant difference was found in HOTAIR expression level between different TNM Stages. being higher in advanced stages, where patients with distant metastasis showed significantly higher HOTAIR expression. In addition, HOTAIR expression was overexpressed in patients with poorly differentiated tumor compared with other grades .Furthermore, plasma HOTAIR was positively correlated with the CEA level while no signifi- cant association was observed between plasma HOTAIR and age or gender.