Optimal cutoff of pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in head and neck cancer patients: a meta-analysis and validation study

Table 1 Characteristics of studies included in the final analyses

	Study (First Author)	Publication year	No. of subject	NLR cutoff	Stage	Index of tumor	Follow-up (mo)	Outcome	HR extraction	Multivariate adjustment
1	He [28]	2012	1410	2.17	I-IV	Pharynx^a	41	OS, PFS	Reported	Yes
2	Millrud [29]	2012	20	6	I-IV	Others^b	24	OS	Reported	No
3	Fang [30]	2013	226	2.44	I-IV	Oral cavity		OS, DFS	Reported	No
4	Rassouli [18]	2013	273	4.27		Others	45	DFS	Reported	No
5	Jin [31]	2014	229	3.6	III, IV	Pharynx		OS	Reported	Yes
6	Young [32]	2014	249	5		Pharynx	46	OS	Reported	No
7	Haddad [33]	2015	46	5	III, IV	Others	34	OS, DFS	Reported	No
8	Rachidi [34]	2015	543	4.39	I-IV	Others	64	OS	Reported	Yes
9	Salim [35]	2015	79	2.93	I-IV	Others		OS, PFS	Reported	No
10	Selzer [36]	2015	170	5	I-IV	Others		OS	Reported	Yes
11	Song [37]	2015	146	2.3		Pharynx	26	OS	Reported	No
12	Sun [19]	2015	251	2.7	I-IV	Pharynx	50	OS, PFS	Reported	Yes
13	Tu [16]	2015	141	2.17	I-IV	Larynx	51	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
14	Charles [14] (1)^c	2016	76	5	I-IV	Pharynx	29	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
15	Charles [14] (2)^c	2016	69	5	I-IV	Others	29	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
16	Chua [38]	2016	380	3	I-IV	Pharynx		OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
17	Fu [39]	2016	420	2.59	III, IV	Larynx		OS	Reported	Yes
18	Ikeguchi [40]	2016	59	5	III, IV	Pharynx	38	OS	Reported	Yes
19	Kano [41]	2016	285	1.92	I-IV	Others	63	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
20	Kim [42]	2016	104	3	III, IV	Others	39	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
21	Moon [43]	2016	153	3	I-IV	Others	39	OS, PFS	Reported	Yes
22	Nakashima [15]	2016	124	2.4	III, IV	Pharynx	47	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
23	Wong [17]	2016	140	3.1	I-IV	Larynx	41	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes
24	Zeng [44]	2016	115	3	III, IV	Larynx	45	OS, PFS	Reported	Yes
25	Turri_Zanoni [45]	2017	215	5.56		Others	51	OS, DFS	Reported	Yes

NLR neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, PLR platelet to lymphocyte ratio, OS overall survival, DFS disease free survival, PFS progression free survival
^ainclude following tumor subsite; nasopharynx, oropharynx and hypopharynx
^binclude following tumor subsite; nasal cavity or not specified
^cA paper by Charles et al. had clinical data with two groups; oropharyngeal cancer and non-oropharyngeal cancer. We divided the results into two independent sets and employed these results separately into our analyses, named as Charles (1) and Charles (2)

ISSN: 1471-2407