Aim: Estimate prognosis and clinical outcome of patients with localized or metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is an important issue which drive our medical decisions.
Methods: We carried out a meta-analysis of available clinical studies exploring neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in RCC in order to evaluate if this ratio could be correlated to overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) of patients with localized/metastatic RCC.
Results: In overall population higher NLR resulted in worst OS and PFS (OS pooled hazard ratio of 1.80; 95% CI: 1.61-2.00; I2 45%; PFS pooled hazard ratio of 1.69; 95% CI: 1.42-2.01; I2 81%), this negative correlation was also confirmed in both metastatic and nonmetastatic patients.
Conclusion: The NLR ratio is a variable correlated to prognosis in RCC patients.
Keywords: localized RCC; meta-analysis; metastatic RCC; neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio; predictive factor; prognostic factor; renal cell carcinoma; systematic review.