Preoperative Neutrophil-Lymphocyte Ratio and Platelet-Lymphocyte Ratio Are Not Clinically Useful in Predicting Prognosis in Early Stage Cervical Cancer

BACKGROUND: An objective of this study was to determine the prognostic role of neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in patients with cervical cancer (CC) stages IA2-IB1. METHODS: The study included 484 patients who underwent radical hysterectomy with pelvic node dissection. The associations of preoperative NLR and PLR with clinicopathologic characteristics and oncological outcomes were analyzed. The cut-off values of NLR (=1.8) and PLR (=119) were set as medians. RESULTS: The clinicopathologic analysis showed that NLR was associated with age (p=0.010), tumor size (p=0.045), and adjuvant treatment (p=0.005), and PLR was associated with only adjuvant treatment (p=0.033). DFS and OS were not significantly different between patients with high and low NLR (p=0.670 and p=0.934) or high and low PLR (p=0.780 and p=0.306). The independent prognostic factors associated with OS were lymph node status and anemia, and with DFS were histology, deep stromal invasion, and lymph node status. CONCLUSIONS: NLR and PLR have no use as prognostic biomarker for DFS and OS in early-stage CC. However, NLR and PLR might be of use in determining the risk for adjuvant treatment.