A novel inflammation-based prognostic index for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: neutrophil lymphocyte ratio/albumin ratio

Background: We initially proposed a novel inflammation-based prognostic index, named neutrophil lymphocyte ratio/albumin ratio (NLR/Alb), for predicting the postoperative survival in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Materials and methods: A retrospective study of 329 cases with resectable ESCC was included. The optimal cut-off values were evaluated by X-tile program. The 5-year cancer-specific survival (CSS) was calculated by Kaplan-Meier method. Cox regression analyses were performed to evaluate the prognostic factors. Results: The optimal cut-off value was 0.1 for NLR/Alb according to the X-tile program. There was a significantly better 5-year CSS in patients with NLR/Alb <= 0.1 than patients with NLR/Alb > 0.1 (39.1% vs. 11.0%, P < 0.001). According to multivariate analyses, NLR/Alb (P = 0.001) was an independent prognostic factor. Conclusions: The NLR/Alb is a novel and usefull predictive factor in patients with ESCC.