Elevated preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio can predict poor survival in early stage gastric cancer patients receiving radical gastrectomy: The Fujian prospective investigation of cancer (FIESTA) study

Abstract

Aims: This cohort study was conducted to evaluate the prognostic impact of blood-routine parameters before radical gastrectomy on gastric cancer mortality. Methods: Total 3012 patients with gastric cancer were consecutively enrolled from a mono-center between 2000 and 2010, and the latest follow-up was completed in 2015. Results: The median follow-up time was 44.05 months. Finally, 1331 out of 3012 gastric cancer patients died from gastric cancer. Per standard deviation increment in neutrophil (hazard ratio or HR=1.08, P<0.001), white blood cell count (HR=1.07, P=0.001), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio or NLR (HR=1.08, P<0.001) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (HR=1.08, P<0.001) was significantly associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer mortality, while that in lymphocyte (HR=0.69, P<0.001), hemoglobin (HR=0.82, P<0.001) and lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (HR=0.68, P<0.001) was associated with a reduced risk. Survival tree analysis indicated that in patients with TNM stage I/II, the contrasts of NLR>2.61 with ≤2.61 and NLR>1.87 with ≤1.87 were respectively associated with a 5.21-fold (P=0.004) and 2.36-fold (P=0.001) increased risk of gastric cancer mortality. The effect-size magnitude of NLR was further potentiated in patients with invasion depth T1/T2 (HR=1.73, P=0.001), regional lymph node metastasis N0 (HR=1.60, P<0.001), TNM stage I/II (HR=1.36, P=0.009) and tumor size ≤ 4.5 cm (HR=1.17, P<0.001). Conclusions: Our findings consolidated the prognostic impact of preoperative NLR on gastric mortality, and demonstrated that elevated preoperative NLR was a robust indicator of poor survival in patients at early stage.

Keywords: Blood-routine parameter; Gastric cancer; Prognosis; Survival..

Figure 1

Survival tree structure of blood-routine parameters along with demographic and clinicopathological characteristics. Abbreviations: NLR, Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio; LNM, lymph node metastasis; RDW, red cell distribution width; BMI, body mass index. Panel B and C are the Kaplan-Meier curves of different nodes generated by survival tree analysis (panel A). In panel A, the upper number in the box refers to the number of patients, and the lower number refers to the median survival time.