Comparison Between Preoperative Inflammation Based Scores and TNM Staging in Patients with Oral Cancer

Background: India, one of the countries with the highest incidence of oral cancer, accounting for 30% of all new oral cancer cases in the world. Therefore, strong diagnostic markers are critical for the diagnosis and survival of patients suffering from oral cancer. Based on this relationship between inflammation and cancer progression, several inflammation-based scores have been demonstrated to have diagnostic and prognostic value in many types of malignant solid tumours. Objective: To compare the correlation between systemic inflammation based prognostic scores and tumour node metastasis (TNM) stage in patients undergoing oral cancer treatment. Methods: The inflammation-based scores were calculated for 120 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma divided into four groups based on TNM staging. Neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR), tumour size, nodes involved were analysed. Statistics were performed to compare the diagnostic value of the selected scores and TNM stage. Results: This current study compares 30 patients in each stage of TNM stages 1,2,3 and 4. The mean tumour size is 1.8 x 1.41, 3.23x2.28, 2.85x2.43 and 3.78x 3.06 in stage 1,2,3 and 4 respectively. The largest lymph node measurable was 1.33x1.36 in stage 3 and 1.84x 1.38 in stage 4. The number of lymph nodes involved in stage 3 are 1.1 and 2.82 in stage 4. The mean NLR in stage 1,2,3 and 4 were 2.68, 2.72, 3.17 and 3.68 respectively. The mean PLR in stage 1, 2,3 and 4 were 106.4, 117.8, 108.2 and 182.2 respectively. Conclusion: The present study indicates that elevated NLR and PLR values are associated with advanced stages of TNM staging for Oral squamous cell carcinoma.