Preoperative prognostic nutritional index predicts prognosis of patients with oral cavity cancer

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether prognostic nutritional index (PNI) predicts patient survival outcomes in oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). MATERIAL AND METHODS The data of a total of 360 patients subjected to primary surgery for OSCC were retrospectively analysed. Patients were categorised into high-PNI (≥ 51.75) and low-PNI (< 51.75) groups based on the PNI cut-off value attained from receiver operating characteristic analyses (p < .001), and the intergroup differences in clinicopathological features were determined. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazard model was employed to determine the survival prediction ability of the PNI, and a nomogram based on the PNI was established for individualised survival prediction. RESULTS A low PNI was noted to exhibit a significant association with shorter overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) (both p < .001). Multivariate Cox analyses showed that a lower PNI independently indicated shorter OS and DFS (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.187; p = .001 and HR = 1.459; p = .023, respectively). The concordance-index and calibration plots of the PNI-based nomogram revealed the high discriminative ability for OS. CONCLUSIONS Preoperative PNI is a valuable biomarker for predicting OSCC prognosis, and the proposed PNI-based nomogram can provide individualised prognostic prediction.