Utility of preoperative neutrophil–lymphocyte and platelet–lymphocyte ratios in differential diagnosis of benign, borderline, and malignant ovarian tumors

Abstract

To investigate the utility of preoperative neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in the differential diagnosis of benign, borderline, and malignant ovarian tumors. This retrospective study was conducted on patients with adnexal masses who underwent surgical resection at Haseki Training and Research Hospital between September 2008 and September 2015. Sociodemographic characteristics, histopathological results and laboratory parameters were obtained from medical reports. Hematological parameters and calculated NLR and PLR were analyzed between tumor groups using IBM SPSS statistics version 22. 381 patients with a mean age of 40.81 (age range: 13-83 years) were included. Of those, 293 patients (76.91%) had benign ovarian tumors, 18 (4.72%) had borderline, and 70 (18.37%) had malignant ovarian tumors. The mean NLR was 2.318 ± 2.29 and the mean PLR was 134.35 ± 59 in benign ovarian tumors, the mean NLR was 4.27±5.23 and the mean PLR was 165.06±98.72 in borderline ovarian tumors, the mean NLR was 4.08±4.37 and the mean PLR was 194.72±114.85 in malign ovarian tumors. The NLR and PLR were significantly higher in malignant than benign or borderline ovarian tumors (all p= 0.0001). The diagnostic cut-off value of NLR for differentiating between benign or borderline and malignant tumors was 1.17, whereas that of PLR for distinguishing between benign/borderline and malignancy was 87.94.The present study indicated that NLR and PLR were significantly higher in ovarian cancers than in benign or borderline ovarian masses. Preoperative NLR and PLR values may help distinguish malignant from benign or borderline ovarian tumors.

Keywords

• ovary tumor
• neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR)
• platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR)

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