Abstract
Background: Several studies have demonstrated that diverse systemic inflammatory-based prognostic parameters predict poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer. However, few studies focused on the relationships between postoperative complications and systemic inflammatory-based prognostic parameters after curative gastrectomy. We investigated the relationships between postoperative complications and these parameters to identify parameter-specific postoperative complications, and assessed the clinical utility of the parameters as predictors of postoperative complications in stage I–III gastric cancer patients.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 300 patients who underwent curative gastrectomy for stage I–III gastric cancer. A postoperative complication sensitive to the systemic inflammatory-based prognostic parameters was identified using a receiver operating characteristic curve, and we evaluated the relationships between the identified postoperative complication and other clinical factors.Results: In total, 101 patients (33.7%) had postoperative Clavien–Dindo grade II–IV complications, namely anastomotic complications, such as leak, stenosis, or hemorrhage (35 patients, 11.7%); pancreatic fistula (16 patients, 5.3%); and pneumonia (14 patients, 4.7%). Postoperative pneumonia had the most sensitive relationship to five systemic inflammatory-based prognostic parameters, and was associated with poor prognosis in stage I–III gastric cancer patients after curative gastrectomy. Multivariate analysis revealed that preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (odds ratio: 5.228, 95% confidence interval: 1.269–21.541; P=0.022) was an independent predictor of postoperative pneumonia.Conclusions: Preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio may be a useful predictor of postoperative pneumonia in stage I–III gastric cancer patients after curative gastrectomy.