Background/aim: The purpose of this study is to investigate the prognostic significance of the pretreatment F-NLR score, which is based on fibrinogen (F) and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in patients with advanced hypopharyngeal carcinoma (HPC).
Materials and methods: A total of 111 advanced HPC patients treated with radiotherapy, chemoradiotherapy, or bioradiotherapy were classified into three groups: F-NLR score of 2 (fibrinogen ≥341 mg/dl and NLR≥3.59), score of 1 (fibrinogen ≥341 mg/dl or NLR≥3.59), and score of 0 (fibrinogen <341 mg/dl and NLR<3.59).
Results: F-NLR score of 2 was an independent prognostic factor for overall (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced HPC in the multivariate analysis. Both OS and PFS were significantly lower in patients with an F-NLR score of 2 than in those with an F-NLR score of 0.
Conclusion: F-NLR score was useful to stratify patients to extract poor prognostic characteristics in patients with advanced HPC.
Keywords: F-NLR score; Pretreatment biomarker; hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma; neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio; radiotherapy.
Copyright© 2018, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.