Development of a Prognostic Model for Early Breast Cancer Integrating Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio and Clinical-Pathological Characteristics.

Background: Breast cancer-related inflammation is critical in tumorigenesis, cancer progression, and patient prognosis. Several inflammatory markers derived from peripheral blood cells count, such as the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), monocyte-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII) are considered as prognostic markers in several types of malignancy.

Methods: We investigate and validate a prognostic model in early patients with breast cancer to predict disease-free survival (DFS) based on readily available baseline clinicopathological prognostic factors and preoperative peripheral blood-derived indexes.