Prognostic evaluation of patients with TNM stage I to III gastric cancer by platelet-lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio

Abstract

Objective To compare the ability of platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in evaluating the prognosis of patients with TNM stageⅠto Ⅲ gastric cancer. Methods From May 2001 to December 2013, the clinicopathological data of 645 patients with gastric cancer treated at Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital were retrospectively analyzed. Chi-square test was used to analyze the differences between NLR, and PLR and clinicopathological characteristics of patients. Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test were performed to compare the overall survival of patients. Cox proportional hazards regression model was performed to analyze the prognosis of gastric cancer patients. The ability of NLR and PLR to evaluate the prognosis of gastric cancer was compared by receiver operating characteristic curve. Results The cutoff values of PLR and NLR were 141.50 and 1.94, respectively. PLR was associated with gender, resection method, maximum diameter of tumor, whether chemotherapy, T-stage, N-stage, TNM stage, tumor location, white blood cell, hemoglobin, albumin, and whether total gastrectomy (χ2=9.224, 10.577, 28.825, 6.831, 29.059, 28.637, 30.748, 18.023, 24.320, 77.274, 9.021 and 10.745, all P<0.05). NLR were associated with resection method, maximum diameter of tumor, T-stage, N-stage and TNM stage, white blood cell, hemoglobin and albumin (χ2=14.563, 12.092, 22.697, 44.735, 34.151, 7.949, 9.611 and 7.498, all P<0.05). The results of multivariate analysis showed that resection method, whether chemotherapy, T-stage, N-stage, PLR and whether total gastrectomy were all independent risk factors for gastric cancer patients (χ2=23.653, 22.023, 16.697, 24.038, 4.110 and 22.364, all P<0.05). The five-year cumulative survival rate of the patients with PLR<141.50 was higher than that of patients with PLR≥141.50 (55.4% vs. 30.5%), and the difference was statistically significant (χ2=47.968, P<0.01). The AUC value of PLR in prognostic evaluation of gastric cancer was 0.629, which was higher than that of NLR (0.596, P<0.01). Conclusion PLR is better than NLR in the prognostic evaluation of gastric cancer patients. Key words: Stomach neoplasms; Prognosis; Platelet-lymphocyte ratio; Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio