Combination of psoas muscle mass index and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio as a prognostic predictor for patients undergoing nonsurgical hepatocellular carcinoma therapy

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Reliable predictors for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are urgently needed. The psoas muscle index (PMI) is a simple and rapid method for evaluating muscle atrophy. Furthermore, the neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a prognostic factor that is easy to calculate in everyday clinical practice. We aimed to investigate the value of the PMI and NLR as prognostic factors for patients receiving nonsurgical HCC therapy, hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC), transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE), or molecular targeted drugs such as sorafenib (SOR) and lenvatinib (LEN). METHODS: We enrolled 87 patients with HCC who were treated with HAIC, TACE, SOR, or LEN. The primary endpoint was overall survival (OS) with variable PMI or NLR status. For Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC)‐B patients, useful prognostic factors were examined by comparing the OS between stratified groups. Prognostic factors including PMI and NLR were evaluated by univariate and multivariate analysis. RESULTS: Analysis of HAIC or TACE (HAIC/TACE) and SOR or LEN (SOR/LEN) patients showed significant differences in OS between low and high PMI. In patients treated with TACE, there was a significant difference in OS between low and high NLR. For BCLC‐B and low PMI, the prognosis was significantly worse for SOR/LEN than for TACE, although there was no difference for high PMI, suggesting that PMI may be useful for treatment selection. In addition, the prognostic formula composed of PMI, NLR, and up‐to‐seven criteria developed in the present study may be useful. CONCLUSION: PMI and NLR are considered to be independent prognostic factors for HCC.