A novel predictive marker for the recurrence of nasal polyposis following endoscopic sinus surgery

We aimed to determine the value of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte (NLR) ratio for prediction of recurrence in patients subjected to endoscopic sinus surgery. Higher neutrophil counts mean more chronic inflammation so the NLR value could show the inflammatory level resulting with higher incidence of recurrence. From January 2011 to March 2013, we performed a retrospective review of the complete blood count samples from 192 patients with chronic sinusitis who underwent endoscopic sinus surgery. The patients were divided into two groups based on the presence of nasal polyps. NLR and platelet-to-lymphocyte (PLR) ratios were analyzed. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to determine the cut-off value for significant differences in variables between the recurrence and non-recurrence groups. The ROC analysis results revealed an NLR cut-off of 3.13 and a PLR cut-off of 208.75. Our analysis revealed that NLR is an independent risk factor for recurrence of chronic sinusitis in patients subjected to endoscopic sinus surgery (p = 0.006), whereas the PLR was not a predictive factor for recurrence (p = 0.167). Our study revealed that the NLR could be used to predict disease recurrence before endoscopic sinus surgery. However, additional studies are needed to confirm these results.