Prognostic value of lymph node ratio in cervical cancer: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: The role of the lymph node ratio (LNR) in the existing tumor node metastasis classification system should be verified as one of the prognosis prediction factors. This work evaluated LNR's performance in predicting cervical cancer (CC) prognosis through a meta-analysis. Method: Related studies were retrieved from the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and PubMed databases. The language was restricted to English. The combined hazard ratios (HRs) were utilized to analyze the prognostic value of LNR. Results. Our study included 8 articles with 3325 subjects published after 2015. Based on our analysis, high LNR was the adverse prognostic factor for overall survival (OS, HR=1.45; 95% CI=1.23-1.73; P=.238) and disease-free survival (DFS, HR=2.69; 95% CI=1.98-3.66; P=.597) among the CC cases. Furthermore, as revealed by subgroup analysis, in CC patients, median LNR of about 0.0625 and 0.066 served as the prominent risk factor for DFS and OS. Conclusions: The current work illustrates that elevated LNR is related to the dismal prognosis of CC. More well-designed clinical studies are warranted for assessing whether LNR is a factor independently predicting the prognosis of CC.