Are Preoperative Systemic Immune Index and Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio Sufficient to Predict Lymph Node Positivity and Overall Survival in Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Cases?

Abstract

Aim: The neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a parameter that has been shown to be effective as a prognostic marker in many solid tumors. It is aimed to investigate NLR and the systemic immune-inflammation index (SII) in predicting the overall survival and lymph node positivity in bladder cancer (BC). Methods: The retrospective study included patients that underwent radical cystoprostatectomy/radical cystectomy (RC) due to muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), high-grade T1 BC, or carcinoma in situ in our clinic between January 2010 and March 2020. All the patients had no history of preoperative metastasis, lymph nodes, chemotherapy, hematological malignancies, and preoperative urinary tract infection. Data on neutrophil, lymphocyte, platelet, and hemoglobin levels and total white blood cell counts were retrieved from clinical records and data on disease stage and lymph node positivity were retrieved from pathology reports. Follow-up times and survival times were recorded. Results: The 213 patients comprised 196 (92%) men and 17 (8%) women with a mean age of 63.17 +/- 11.25 years. Lymph node positivity was detected in 49 (23%) patients. The mean overall survival time was 75.04, 63.77, and 84.4 months in all patients, patients with lymph node positivity, and patients with lymph node negativity, respectively. No significant difference was found between patients with lymph node positivity and negativity with regard to NLR and SII values (p=0.975 and p=0.745, respectively). In the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis NLR and SII had no significant effect in predicting lymph node positivity [Area under the ROC curve (AUC) 0.499 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.403-0.594) and AUC 0.485 (95% CI: 0.394-0.575), respectively] and in predicting overall survival [AUC 0.423 (95% CI: 0.346-0.501, p=0.056) and AUC 0.435 (95% CI: 0.357-0.514, p=0.107), respectively]. Conclusion: The results indicated that SII and NLR are not sufficient to predict lymph node positivity and survival in patients with organ-confined BC.