Prognostic Value of Lymph Node Density Compared to Pre-operative Platelet-to-Lymphocyte Ratio and Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio in Patients with Tongue Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background We aimed to investigate the prognostic significance of lymph node density (LND), and pre-operative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) for outcome measuring in tongue squamous cell carcinoma (TSCC)’ patients. Methods A total of 129 patients who underwent surgery for TSCC were enrolled in this retrospective study. LND and pre-operative NLR and PLR were used as outcome measures and their correlations with different clinicopathological features were examined. Results The cutoff values for NLR, PLR, and LND were obtained 1.21, 97.81, and 0.02, respectively, by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve approach. Only LND was found to be significantly associated with decreased overall survival (HR = 4.24; 95% CI 1.49–12.10; P = 0.007) and disease-free survival (HR = 3.48; 95% CI 1.43–8.45; P = 0.006) both in univariate and multivariate analyzes. Conclusion Based on the findings, the LND has superiority over pre-operative NLR and PLR in predicting outcomes for the patients with TSCC.