The role of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in determining the prognosis of patients with testicular cancer

Abstract

Background: Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), as systemic inflammatory response markers, have been shown to play a role in prognostic factors for patients with malignancies in recent years. However, their application as the prognostic factors of testicular cancer remains unknown. This study aims to evaluate the prognostic role of testicular malignancies using preoperative hematological parameters, NLR and PLR, and their pre-diagnostic role in the staging of testicular cancer. Methods: This was a cross-sectional retrospective study of thirty-nine patients who underwent radical orchiectomy due to testicular cancer at the Department of Urology Haji Adam Malik General Hospital between January 2014 and December 2018. For each patient, clinical features including age, sex, clinical stage, chemotherapy, radiology report, pre-treatment neutrophil count, lymphocyte count, platelet count, NLR, PLR, and postoperative histopathological report were collected. Then we analyzed the association between NLR, PLR and the testicular cancer metastasis incidence. Result: The mean age of the patients was 27.56 ± 17.47 years. Seventeen patients had seminoma (42.5%), 16 others were yolk sac type of cancer (40.0%), and the rest six patients were teratoma (3 patients), lymphoma (2 patients), and embryonal carcinoma (1 patient). More than half (66.48%) of the patients received chemotherapy after radical orchiectomy, with 48.70% in clinical stage III. PLR was associated with testicular cancer metastases (p=0.024), while NLR was not (p=0.729). Conclusion: High pre-treatment PLR levels are associated with the occurrence of metastasis in testicular cancer patients. Hematological parameters will become critical in the preoperative evaluation of such testicular cancer cases. The potential prognostic significance of NLR and PLR in testicular cancer should be tested with further studies.