Pretreatment prognostic nutritional index is a significant predictor of prognosis in patients with cervical cancer treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy.

This study investigated whether pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and prognostic nutritional index (PNI) are prognostic factors in patients with cervical cancer who undergo concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) and radiotherapy (RT). A total of 131 patients who underwent CCRT and RT for cervical cancer were retrospectively investigated and the correlations of NLR, PLR and PNI with clinical parameters and prognosis were assessed in CCRT and RT. The CCRT and RT groups had a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 41.82 and 24.72 months, respectively, and an overall survival of 49.70 and 29.56 months, respectively. At a cut-off value of NLR≥2.85, the PFS and OS in patients with higher NLR undergoing RT were significantly shorter compared with those in patients with lower NLR (P=0.029 and P=0.017, respectively). At a cut-off value for PNI of ≤48.55 in patients undergoing CCRT and ≤45.80 in patients undergoing RT, the PFS and OS in patients with lower PNI were significantly shorter compared with those in patients with higher PNI (PFS and OS with CCRT, P<0.001 and P<0.001, respectively; PFS and OS with RT, P=0.002 and P=0.008, respectively). Multivariate analyses also identified low PNI as an independent prognostic factor for PFS and OS in patients receiving CCRT. Therefore, low PNI was shown to predict poor prognosis in patients with cervical cancer.