Source Institute of Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan. Division of Hepato-Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Tungs' Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan. Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan. Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan. Department of Medical Research, Tungs' Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan.

Background and Aim: Increasing evidence correlates the presence of systemic inflammation with poor survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We studied whether peripheral blood neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), a marker of systemic inflammatory response, would be a useful predictor for outcome in patients with early HCC undergoing radiofrequency ablation (RFA).

Methods: A total of 158 patients with early HCC underwent RFA. Potential prognostic factors such as age, gender, tumoral characteristics, Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) class and NLR were analyzed. The study endpoints were overall survival (OS) and new recurrence.

Results: We modeled NLR as a continuous explanatory variable in regression analyses. Multivariate analysis revealed that tumor size (P= 0.005) and high baseline NLR (P = 0.001) were independent explanatory variables associated with unfavorable OS. Regarding new recurrence, multivariate analysis showed that CTP class B (P= 0.002), alpha-fetoprotein >400 ng/mL (P= 0.030), tumor size (P= 0.002) and tumor multiplicity (P= 0.013) were found to be worse prognosticators, but not baseline NLR. In a subset analysis of 140 patients whose post-RFA NLR data at first follow-up visit were available, multivariate analysis revealed that high post-RFA NLR was identified as an independent covariate, not only for OS (P= 0.006), but for new recurrence (P= 0.010) as well.

Conclusions: High baseline NLR was associated with worse OS for patients with early HCC; post-RFA NLR predicted not only OS, but also tumor recurrence.