Clinical Relevance and Prognostic Value of Inflammatory Biomarkers: A prospective Study in Terminal Cancer Patients Receiving Palliative Care

Context Inflammatory biomarkers have prognostic value in cancer patients, but the feasibility of their use with terminal cancer patients and the related cutoff points are poorly explored. Objectives To describe the percentiles values of inflammatory biomarkers; to identify their cutoff points in relation to death; and to determine the prognostic value of C-reactive protein (CRP), leukocytes, neutrophils, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), CRP/albumin ratio (CAR), and modified Glasgow Prognostic Score for death within 90 days, in terminal cancer patients receiving palliative care. Methods Prospective cohort study that included patients who received palliative care at the Palliative Care Unit of the National Cancer Institute (Brazil) between October 2019 and March 2020. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to identify the optimal cutoff points of the inflammatory biomarkers for the prediction of death in 90 days. Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression were used to verify the prognostic value of these cutoff points and concordance statistic (C-statistic) was used to test their predictive accuracy. Results A total 205 patients (mean age: 62.5 years; female: 59%) were included in the study. The optimal cutoff points were CRP ≥6.7mg/L, CAR ≥2.0, leukocytes ≥9300/μL, neutrophils ≥7426/μL and NLR ≥6.0. All biomarkers showed prognostic value and good predictive accuracy when their cutoff points were used, especially CAR, which presented excellent discrimination power (C-statistic: 0.80). Conclusion The inflammatory biomarkers analyzed are independent predictive factors for death within 90 days in terminal cancer patients. CAR appears to be the most useful parameter for predicting survival in these patients.