Prognostic significance of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma / 中华肝胆外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the clinical significance of peripheral blood neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in predicting prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Methods The clinical data of 661 patients with HCC were retrospectively analyzed.Routine peripheral blood test results were used to calculate the NLR and PLR,and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were drawn.Using the thresholds of NLR and PLR,the patients were divided into the low NLR group and the high NLR group,and the low PLR group and the high PLR group.Overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) were evaluated by the Kaplan-Meier method.Independent prognostic predictors were determined by the Cox proportional hazard model.Results The NLR and PLR thresholds were 2.790 and 99,respectively.Analysis of the ROC curves showed higher NLR and PLR were significantly associated with poorer OS and DFS (all P ＜ 0.05).Multivariate analysis showed that NLR was an independent risk factor of OS and DFS (both P ＜ 0.05).The results remained unchanged when the NLR was further analyzed by applying different cut-off values of 2.810 and 3.In subgroup analysis,NLR remained an independent factor of Barcelona Clinical Liver Cancer staging system (BCLC) 0/A/B (P ＜ 0.05 for all measurements).Conclusion An elevated preoperative NLR could be a better prognostic predictor for HCC patients in comparison with PLR,especially for BCLC 0/A/B patients.