Pretreatment lymphopenia is an easily detectable predictive and prognostic marker in patients with metastatic esophagus squamous cell carcinoma receiving first-line chemotherapy.

Abstract

To explore the influence of pretreatment lymphopenia on the toxicity and efficacy of first‐line chemotherapy in patients with metastatic esophagus squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). In total, 215 patients were included in this retrospective study. Correlations between pretreatment lymphopenia (lymphocyte count <1 × 109/L) and the occurrence of toxicity and the efficacy of first‐line palliative chemotherapy were investigated. Pretreatment lymphopenia was found in 19.1% of the patients. The overall response rate (ORR) was 35.5% (65 of 183 patients). Patients with pretreatment lymphopenia had a lower ORR to chemotherapy compared with those without lymphopenia (22.2% vs. 38.8%, respectively; P = 0.045). Furthermore, the patients with pretreatment lymphopenia have higher grade 3–4 hematological toxicity than that of patients without pretreatment lymphopenia (19 of 41 patients, 46.3% vs. 54 of 174 patients, 31.0%; P = 0.048). Pretreatment lymphopenia was not correlated with grade 3–4 nonhematological toxicity. Multivariate analysis showed that pretreatment lymphopenia is an independent prognostic factor. Patients with pretreatment lymphopenia had a significantly shorter overall survival time than those without lymphopenia (8.2 months vs. 12.7 months; P = 0.020). This study shows that pretreatment lymphopenia is a good prognostic factor as well as a predictive factor for tumor response and chemotherapy‐related hematological toxicity in metastatic ESCC.