The prognostic role of pretreatment platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio as predictors in patients with colorectal cancer: a meta-analysis.

AIM: This meta-analysis was designed to analyze and evaluate the prognostic role of preoperative or pretreatment platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). METHOD: We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database and WanFang Database up to April 2016. RESULTS: A total of 16 studies (n = 5068 participants) were included for this meta-analysis. Elevated PLR has a close relationship with the poor overall survival of CRC, with the pooled hazard ratio being 1.88 (95% CI: 1.50, 2.36; p < 0.00001). CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis indicated that pretreatment PLR may be a cost-effective and noninvasive serum biomarker for poor prognosis for patients with CRC.

The pretreatment thrombocytosis may predict prognosis of patients with colorectal cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

AIM: Recently, several studies have reported that thrombocytosis may be associated with the poor prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC). Nevertheless, their conclusions were still controversial. Results & methodology: We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science up to April 2016. A total of 30 studies including 9129 patients were included in this meta-analysis. Thrombocytosis had a close relationship with the poor overall survival of CRC compared with normal platelet counts, with the pooled hazard ratios being 1.89 (95% CI: 1.45-2.47; p < 0.00001) and 1.83 (95% CI: 1.33-2.53; p = 0.0002), with univariate and multivariate analyses, respectively. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis indicated that thrombocytosis may be a cost-effective and noninvasive indicator for poor prognosis of patients with CRC, especially for overall survival.