Pretreatment NRS-2002 scores combined with hematologic inflammation markers are independent prognostic factors in patients with resectable thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Xin-Wei Guo,1,* Yang-Chen Liu,2,* Fei Gao,2,* Sheng-Jun Ji,3 Ju-Ying Zhou,1 Lei Ji,1 Shao-Bing Zhou2 1Department of Radiation Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Radiation Oncology, Affiliated Taixing People’s Hospital of Yangzhou University, Taixing, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Radiotherapy and Oncology, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Suzhou Hospital, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the prognostic values of Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002) and hematologic inflammation markers in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) receiving curative esophagectomy. Materials and methods: A total of 277 patients with ESCC treated with standard curative esophagectomy were retrospectively analyzed. These patients were grouped for further analysis according to the systemic inflammation score (SIS), the combination of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (CNP) score and NRS-2002 score. The Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test were adopted to calculate and compare the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) rates with these parameters. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to carry out univariate and multivariate analyses. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were applied to verify the accuracy of SIS, CNP and NRS-2002 for survival prediction. Results: In univariate analysis, the following factors were significantly associated with poor PFS and OS: sex, T stage, N stage, TNM stage, SIS, CNP and NRS-2002 (all P