Supervisors info:
Πέτρος Μπακάκος, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Κωνσταντίνος Ν. Συρίγος, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Γαρυφαλλιά Πουλάκου, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
INTRODUCTION
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide with over 1 million deaths each year. The 5-year survival of patients with lung cancer do not overcomes 18%. Finding the patients with the worst prognosis and the need of radical therapies have led to the searching of new prognostic factors.
AIM
The purpose of our study was to find out the relation between the type of the white blood cell and the survival of patients with non small cell lung cancer and identify possible prognostic factors.
MATERIALS-METHODS
It was a retrospective observational study, which studied 85 patients from the database of the oncology unit of the third Pathological Department of Sotiria Chest Hospital, diagnosed with NSCLC stage ΙΙΙΒ-IV. Among factors studied for each patient were sex, age, smoking habit, histological type, stage, weight loss, performance status, remote metastasis and blood count before chemotherapy, in the middle of therapy and before progression. The neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was calculated by dividing the absolute count of neutrophils with the absolute lymphocyte count.
RESULTS
The median age of patients was 68,8 years. 75,3% were men and 72,9% stage IV. 96,4% treated with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy. 9,4% was suffering from weight loss more than 5% in the last 3 months before the diagnosis, 3,5% found with one bone metastasis, 21,2% with multiple bone metastasis, 10,6% with liver metastasis, 16,5% with brain metastasis. The high lymphocyte count in the middle of the therapy was risk factor for progression. The median time until progression was 9,5months. The median time of survival was 14,4months. The survival was different enough depending on histological type and performance status. The survival was longer when NLR was less than 2,3. Independent prognostic factor for survival was found to be NLR before the chemotherapy (p0,001) and multiple bone metastasis (p0,006).
CONCLUSIONS
The neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio may be a prognostic factor of survival when it is measured before chemotherapy in advanced non small cell lung cancer.
