Aim: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic impact of red-cell distribution width (RDW) on the overall survival (OS) of patients with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the tongue.
Background: Development of cancer is connected with an ongoing inflammatory process which is reflected by laboratory indices, such as RDW that can be used as prognostic tools.
Material and methods: The study group consists of 74 consecutive patients treated with radical radiotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy for SSC of the tongue at one institution between 2005-2014. RDW was assessed based on routine blood tests done before the start of the treatment. ROC curve was applied to assess value of RDW in prediction of OS, and a cut-off value for further tests was obtained using the Younden index. The survival analysis was performed using the Kaplan-Meier method, log-rank testing and Cox regression model.
Results: The AUC for RDW in ROC analysis was 0.703, and the optimal cut-off value was 13.5%. 5-year OS was significantly lower in patients with RDW ≥ 13.5% compared with patients with RDW < 13.5% (67% vs. 26%, p-value = 0.0005). Additionally, high RDW was associated with a greater odds ratio for 5-year OS in a multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis (3.43, 1.62-7.25; p = 0.001).
Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that pre-treatment RDW ≥ 13,5% is an indicator of poor overall survival in patients with SCC of the tongue. Since RDW is a cheap and convenient marker, usually routinely assessed during complete blood count tests, it could be further used as an additional prognostic tool in patients with tongue cancers.
Keywords: RDW; Radiotherapy; Red cell distribution width; Tongue cancer.
© 2020 Greater Poland Cancer Centre. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.