The Prognostic Value of Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte Ratio in Bladder Cancer

In the last decade, cumulative evidence suggests that systemic inflammation is closely related to oncologic outcomes in patients with cancer. This has been demonstrated by a strong correlation between the degree of systemic inflammatory response and poor oncologic outcomes in a variety of malignancies. Several systemic inflammatory markers have been studied and, of those, neutrophilto-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is one of the most widely used inflammatory markers. Although elevated pretreatment NLR has been reported as a useful marker associated with poor oncologic outcome in many cancers, its prognostic value in bladder cancer remains inconsistent. Therefore, this study was designed to evaluate the prognostic significance of NLR in patients with bladder cancer by reviewing published studies.