Prognostic value of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in patients with colon cancer undergoing open and laparoscopic curative resection

INTRODUCTION: It is known that many patient-related factors such as pre-operative nutritional status, comorbid diseases and especially the systemic inflammatory response affect post-operative outcomes and survival as much as the success of curative resection and the pathological stage. In the present study, it has been aimed to determine the effect of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) on post-operative and long term results in patients with colon cancer who underwent laparoscopic curative resection.
METHODS: Eligible 281 patient with colon adenocarcinoma underwent open and laparoscopic curative resection included in study. The patients were grouped as low and high NLR according to a cutoff NLR of 2.27 determined with receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and clinicopathological features, post-operative complications, and survival outcomes were compared.
RESULTS: It was found that patients with high NLR had more advanced disease and there was a significant relationship between post-operative morbidity and high NLR. No significant relationship was found between overall and disease-free survival and NLR.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: NLR, which can be measured by preoperative routine laboratory results, may be a simple, easily accessible prognostic biomarker in predicting the stage of the disease before surgery and identifying patients with high post-operative morbidity in patients with colon cancer. Considering that many factors affect long-term results, these data suggest that NLR, which is a marker that reflects the severity of the inflammatory response, is mostly associated with perioperative and short-term outcomes.