A comprehensive model including preoperative peripheral blood inflammatory markers for prediction of the prognosis of diffuse spinal cord astrocytoma following surgery.

PURPOSE: Due to the rarity of diffuse spinal cord astrocytoma, an effective model is still lacking to stratify their prognosis. Here, we aimed to establish a prognostic model through comprehensively evaluating clinicopathological features and preoperative peripheral blood inflammatory markers in 89 cases.
METHODS: We performed univariate and multivariate Cox regression to identify prognosis factors. The Kaplan-Meier curves and ROC curves were employed to compare the prognostic value of selected factors.
RESULTS: In addition to clinicopathological factors, we revealed the preoperative peripheral blood leukocyte count, neutrophils-to-lymphocytes ratio (NLR), and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) were also significantly correlated with overall survival of spinal cord astrocytoma in univariate Cox regression, and NLR was still significant in multivariate Cox analysis. Further, we demonstrated that NLR ≤ 3.65 and preoperative McCormick score (MMS) ≤ 3 were independently correlated with better survival of WHO grade IV tumors. Meanwhile, Ki-67 < 10% and resection extent ≥ 90% were independent prognostic factors in WHO grade II/III tumors. Finally, we developed a prognostic model that had better predictive efficiencies than WHO grade and histological grade for 1-year (AUC = 76.6), 2- year (AUC = 80.9), and 3-year (AUC = 80.3) survival. This model could classify tumors into 4 classifications with increasingly poor prognosis: 1, WHO grade II/III, with Ki-67 < 10% and resection extent ≥ 90%; 2, WHO grade II/III, Ki-67 ≥ 10% or resection < 90%; 3, WHO grade IV, NLR ≤ 3.65 and MMS ≤ 3; 4, WHO grade IV, with NRL > 3.65 or MMS = 4.
CONCLUSION: We successfully constructed a comprehensive prognostic model including preoperative peripheral blood inflammatory markers, which can stratify diffuse spinal cord astrocytoma into 4 subgroups.