The Fibrinogen/Albumin Ratio Index as an Independent Prognostic Biomarker for Patients with Combined Hepatocellular Cholangiocarcinoma After Surgery

Purpose: The fibrinogen/albumin ratio (FAR) is increasingly considered as a potential biomarker for predicting prognosis in various malignant tumors, whereas the value of the FAR in predicting the recurrence-free survival (RFS) in patients with combined hepatocellular cholangiocarcinoma (cHCC-CCA) after surgery has not been studied.

Patients and methods: A total of 104 patients with surgical-pathologically proved cHCC-CCA were retrospectively analyzed. The best cut-off value of the FAR was calculated via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, and the cohort was then divided into two groups as high-FAR (H-FAR) group and low-FAR (L-FAR) group. The correlation between the preoperative FAR and clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed. Uni- and multi-variable analyses for RFS were evaluated using a Cox proportional hazards model to verify the predictive value of FAR on the RFS of cHCC-CCA. Additionally, a novel clinical nomogram based on FAR was developed to preoperatively predict the RFS of HCC-CCA. The C-index and calibration were conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed nomogram.

Results: According to the cut-off value of the FAR, the patients were grouped into the H-FARI (>0.075) and L-FARI (≤0.075) groups. FAR was significantly correlated with several clinical-pathological features, including age, cirrhosis, AFP, CA19-9, BCLC staging, NLR, and PLR. In the multi-variate analysis, FAR, cirrhosis and tumor size were independent prognostic predictors for poor RFS in cHCC-CCA patients after surgery. Moreover, the clinical nomogram based on FAR was constructed, showing well-predictive accuracy.

Conclusion: The preoperative FAR is a convenient and feasible serum biomarker for predicting the RFS of cHCC-CCA after surgery. Such developed FAR-based nomogram integrating tumor size and cirrhosis could be served as a feasible and convenient tool to assist the decision-making of clinical strategy.