Using preoperative control nutritional status scores as prognostic factors for endometrial cancer

Previous investigations have reported that controlling nutritional (CONUT) status scores, incorporating total cholesterol (TC) and serum albumin (SA) values, and total lymphocyte (LY) counts, are reliable malignant tumor predictors. However, CONUT scores for predicting endometrial cancer (EC) remain unexplored.

To evaluate preoperative CONUT scores as prognostic factors for postoperative EC.

We retrospectively evaluated preoperative CONUT scores in 785 surgically resected EC patients at our hospital between June 2012 and May 2016. Using time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, patients were split into: 1) CONUT-high (CH) (≥1) and 2) CONUT-low (CL) (<1) groups. Relationships between CONUT scores and different clinicopathological, pathological differentiation, muscle layer infiltration depth, and prognosis factors were examined, and Cox regression analyses performed to assess prognostic values on overall survival (OS) rates.

We assigned 404 (51.5%) and 381 (58.5%) patients to CH and CL groups, respectively. In the CH group, body mass index (BMI), prognostic nutrition index (PNI), and LY/monocyte ratios (LMR) were decreased, however, neutrophil/LY (NLR) and platelet/LY ratios (PLR) were increased. Pathological differentiation analyses showed that G1 proportions were higher in the CL group, while G2 and G3 proportions were more prevalent in the CH group. Muscle layer infiltration depth in CL patients was < 50%, while that it was ≥50% in the CH group. No significant differences in OS rates were recorded between CH and CL groups over 60 months. However long-term survival (LTS) rates after 60 months in the CH group were significantly lower when compared with the CL group, and was more obvious in type II EC patients. Also, periuterine infiltration and preoperative CONUT scores were independent prognostic factors for OS rates as indicated by multi-factor analyses.

CONUT scores not only facilitated the estimation of nutritional status, but were highly beneficial for predicting OS rates in patients with EC after curative resection. CONUT scores provided high predictive values for LTS rates over 60 months in these patients.