Association between the platelet to lymphocyte ratio, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio and axillary lymph node metastasis in cT1N0 breast cancer patients.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and axillary lymph node metastasis in cT1N0 breast cancer patients. METHODS The clinicopathological data of 154 patients with cT1N0 breast cancer from January 2015 to June 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. All patients underwent sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy. The differences of PLR and NLR levels among groups with different clinicopathological factors (age, tumor size, ER, PR, HER-2, Ki67, p53 expression levels, vascular tumor thrombus and SLN metastasis) were compared. The relationship between clinicopathological factors and metastasis of SLN and non-SLN was analyzed. RESULTS There were 32 patients with SLN metastasis. The cut-off values of PLR and NLR for the whole group were 142.91 and 2.84. The PLR level was higher in patients with vascular tumor thrombus and SLN metastasis (P 0.05). According to multivariate analysis, the risk of SLN metastasis in patients with vascular tumor thrombus was higher than that in patients without vascular tumor thrombus (P 0.05). CONCLUSION High level of PLR and vascular tumor thrombus are the risk factors for SLN metastasis.