Better performance of preoperative prognostic nutritional index (PNI) than that of neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in prognoses of gastric-cancer patients: a case-control study

Abstract

Abstract Background Systemic inflammation and nutritional issues have been regarded as cancer complications. As indicators of systemic inflammatory responses, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and prognostic nutritional index (PNI) have been recommended to be used in the prediction of certain cancer-related clinical complications. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of PNI and NLR on the prognosis of gastric cancer. Methods From 2010 to 2018, 559 gastric-cancer patients consecutively undergoing radical surgery were involved in this study. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was conducted to determine the optimal cut-off values of PNI and NLR. Using these cut-off values, we categorized the patients into high and low PNI/NLR groups, with clinical characteristics of these two groups compared and analyzed. Results PNI can be used as an independent factor for the prognoses of overall survival rates among patients with gastric cancer, while NLR can not be used as such a factor. Conclusion Both PNI and NLR can reflect the prognoses of patients with gastric cancer. However, PNI is a better factor predicting overall survival rates of patients with gastric cancer than NLR.