Background: Young patients with tongue squamous cell carcinoma (TSCC) mostly lack typical prognostic markers and face a dire prognosis. The aim of this study was to analyze the prognostic relevance of lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) in TSCC patients, with a special emphasis on patients under 45 years.
Methods: This retrospective study included all patients primarily treated for TSCC. The prognostic relevance of LMR was investigated in terms of predicting the overallsurvival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS).
Results: A total of 74 patients were included and the young cohort (<45 years) comprised 27 individuals. The mortality and recurrence rates were 39.2% (n = 29) and 37.8% (n = 28), respectively. OS and DFS were significantly shorter in the low LMR group within the whole cohort. Furthermore, low LMR was associated with worse prognosis, particularly inferior OS (median OS 1.7 vs. 14.6 years, p = 0.0156) and worse DFS (median DFS 0.8 years vs. not reached, p = 0.0405) in the young patient cohort.
Conclusions: Our results reveal that pretreatment LMR might become a prognostic tool for young TSCC patients, especially due to its availability. However, further studies on larger cohorts are necessary to validate our results.
Keywords: lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio; prognostic markers; tongue squamous cell carcinoma.