Correlation between metastatic lymph node ratio and prognosis in patients with extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma

AIM: To investigate the prognostic value of metastatic lymph node ratio (MLNR) in extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ECC) patients undergoing radical resection. METHODS: Seventy-eight patients with ECC were enrolled. Associations between various clinicopathologic factors and prognosis were investigated by Kaplan-Meier analyses. The Cox proportional-hazards model was used for multivariate survival analysis. RESULTS: The overall three- and five-year survival rates were 47.26% and 23.99%, respectively. MLNR of 0, 0-0.2, 0.2-0.5, and > 0.5 corresponded to five-year survival rates of 28.59%, 21.60%, 18.84%, and 10.03%, respectively. Univariate analysis showed that degree of tumor differentiation, lymph node metastasis, MLNR, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, and margin status were closely associated with postoperative survival in ECC patients (P 0.5, 0.2-0.5, 0-0.2, and 0 was 15 mo, 24 mo, 23 mo, and 35.5 mo, respectively. There were statistical differences in survival time between patients with different MLNR (χ2 = 15.38; P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: MLNR is an independent prognostic factor for ECC patients after radical resection and is useful for predicting postoperative survival.