Abstract
Recent studies have shown that the presence of systemic inflammation correlates with poor survival in various of cancers. The aim of this study was to determine the prognostic values of neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in patients with small cell carcinoma of the esophagus (SCCE). Preoperative NLR and PLR were evaluated in 43 patients with SCCE from January 2001 to December 2010. The prognostic significance of both markers was then determined by both uni- and multivariate analytical methods. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were also plotted to verify the accuracy of NLR and PLR for survival prediction. Patients with PLR ≥150 had significantly poorer (relapse-free survival) RFS and (overall survival) OS compared to patients with PLR <150. However, RFS or OS did not differ according to NLR categories (<3.5 and ≥3.5). The areas under the curve (AUC) indicated that PLR was superior to NLR as a predictive factor. The results of the present study conclude that PLR is superior to NLR as a predictive factor in patients with SCCE.
Highlights
Esophageal cancer (EC) is the eighth most common cancer worldwide [1]
Patients with platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR) ≥150 had significantly poorer relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) compared to patients with PLR
The areas under the curve (AUC) were 0.588 (RFS) and 0.650 (OS) for neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and 0.694 (RFS) and 0.720 (OS) for PLR, indicating that PLR was superior to NLR as a predictive factor in patients with Small cell carcinoma of the esophagus (SCCE) (Figure 3)
Summary
Esophageal cancer (EC) is the eighth most common cancer worldwide [1]. In China, the crude mortality rate of EC was 15.2/100,000, which represented 11.2% of all cancer deaths and ranked as the fourth most common cause of cancer death [2]. The most common histological types are squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. Other histological types are uncommon, with small cell carcinoma being especially rare. Small cell carcinoma of the esophagus (SCCE) is a rare disease, which was first described in 1952 by McKeown [3]. The incidence of SCCE between all esophageal malignancies is from 0.05 to 2.4% in western populations, and this rate rises up to 7.6% in Chinese and Japanese literature [4, 5]. Assessing the prognostic factors in SCCE patients will become more and more important
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