A predictive model for treatment response in patients with locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma after concurrent chemoradiotherapy: based on SUVmean and NLR

Background We conducted this study to combine the mean standardized uptake value (SUVmean) and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) to establish a strong predictive model for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) after concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). Methods We retrospectively analyzed 163 newly diagnosed ESCC patients treated with CCRT. Eighty patients (training set) were randomly selected to generate cut-off SUVmean and NLR values by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis and to establish a predictive model by using the independent predictors of treatment outcomes. Then, we evaluated the performance of the prediction model regarding treatment outcomes in the testing set (n = 83) and in all sets. Results A high SUVmean (> 5.81) and high NLR (> 2.42) at diagnosis were associated with unfavorable treatment outcomes in patients with ESCC. The prediction model had a better performance than the simple parameters (p < 0.05). With a cut-off value of 0.77, the prediction model significantly improved the specificity and positive predictive value for treatment response (88.9 and 92.1% in the training set, 95.8 and 97.1% in the testing set, and 92.2 and 91.8% in all sets, respectively). Conclusions The pretreatment SUVmean and NLR were independent predictors of treatment response in ESCC patients treated with CCRT. The predictive model was constructed based on these two parameters and provides a highly accurate tool for predicting patient outcomes.