Background: Recent studies have revealed that the presence of systemic inflammation is associated with poor survival for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. We aimed to investigate prognostic values of preoperative neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in resectable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
Methods: A cohort of 167 resectable ESCC patients was retrospectively reviewed between January 2017 and September 2020. The best cut-off value of NLR and PLR was selected by plotting the receiver operating characteristic curve. All reviewed patients were divided into high NLR/PLR or low NLR/PLR group to evaluate prognostic factors.
Results: Among the 167 patients, 34 (20.36%) were women and 133 (79.64%) were men. The mean age was 62.64 ± 7.91 years, with an age range from 44 to 85 years. All patients were divided into low NLR (< 2.20) or high NLR (≥ 2.20) group (AUC=62.5% with the sensitivity of 61.8% and specificity 60.9%, P=0.025), low PLR (< 110) or high PLR (≥ 110) group (AUC=59.6% with the sensitivity of 82.4% and specificity 35.3%, P=0.083). High NLR and PLR were associated with a larger tumor diameter (P< 0.05), while high NLR was also associated with poor tumor classification (P=0.022). There was a positive correlation between NLR and PLR (r = 0.614, P < 0.001). High NLR and PLR were significantly associated with poor disease-free survival. Multivariate analyses identified NLR as a prognostic factor in resectable ESCC.
Conclusion: The NLR and PLR predict disease-free survival in resectable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
Keywords: neutrophil lymphocyte ratio, platelet lymphocyte ratio, disease-free survival, resectable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma