Prognostic Role of the Prognostic Nutritional Index in Pancreatic Cancer: A Meta-analysis.

Objective: The prognostic nutritional index (PNI) has been reported to play an important prognostic role in various malignancies. Here we performed a meta-analysis to explore the predictive value of PNI in pancreatic cancer (PC).

Methods: Clinical studies about PNI and prognosis in PC were retrieved from Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane Libarary updated on 31 December 2017. Stata 12 was used to compute pooled hazard radio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) to estimate the relationship between PNI and overall survival (OS).

Results: Ten studies with 2064 patients were eligible for final analysis. The pooled HR (1.48, 95%CI: 1.32-1.66, I = 25.5% P = 0.201）revealed that low PNI was related to poor prognosis in patients with PC. The significant relationship between PNI and prognosis was not affected by subgroup analysis based on tumor stage, treatment method, sample size, cutoff value, HR data source and study quality.

Conclusion: Our meta-analysis suggests PNI maybe a potential prognostic indicator for patients with PC.