Preoperative fibrinogen-to-albumin ratio predicts the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma subjected to hepatectomy

BACKGROUND: Systemic inflammatory response (SIR) plays a crucial role in every step of tumorigenesis and development. More recently, the fibrinogen-to-albumin ratio (FAR), an inflammation-based model, was suggested as a prognostic maker for various cancer patients. This research aimed to estimate the prognostic abilities of FAR, neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR), monocyte-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), platelet– lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and systemic immune–inflammation index (SII) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) subjected to curative hepatectomy. METHODS: A total of 1,502 cases who underwent hepatectomy for HCC were included. The predictive performances of FAR, NLR, MLR, PLR and SII were assessed with regards to overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). The area under the time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve was used to compare prognostic performances. RESULTS: Data revealed that FAR had higher predictive accuracy than other inflammation-based models and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) in assessing OS and DFS. Indeed, the OS and DFS of patients with high FAR (> 8.9), differentiated by the optimal cut-off value of FAR, were remarkably reduced (p < 0.05 for OS and DFS). Multivariate Cox regression analyses identified that AFP, FAR, clinically significant portal hypertension, tumor size, Barcelona Clinical Liver Cancer staging system, major resection and blood loss were independent indicators for predicting OS and DFS. Furthermore, these patients could be classified according to their FAR into significantly different subgroups, regardless of AFP levels (p < 0.05 for DFS and OS). Similar results were obtained in other inflammation-based prognostic models. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with NLR, MLR, PLR, SII and AFP, FAR showed significant advantages in predicting survival of HCC patients subjected to liver resection. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12876-022-02328-4.