Abstract
BACKGROUND: Current prognostic criteria are insufficient in predicting outcomes in head and neck cancer, necessitating new, readily available biomarkers. METHODS: Pretreatment neutrophil and lymphocyte counts and their ratio (NLR) were retrospectively investigated for correlation with overall survival while controlling for demographic and clinical confounders. RESULTS: Patients in the highest tertile of neutrophil counts and those in the lowest tertile of lymphocytes experienced shorter survival than the rest of the population. Patients in the highest tertile of the NLR were at a higher risk compared with those in the lowest tertile after multivariate analysis (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.39; p = .0001). Additionally, NLR was lower in patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive tumors compared to HPV-negative tumors and predicted survival in both tumor types. CONCLUSION: Neutrophil and lymphocyte counts are strong biomarkers with opposing prognostic significance and the NLR is a robust predictor of overall survival in oral, pharyngeal, and laryngeal squamous cell carcinomas. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 38: E1068-E1074, 2016.