• Ying Wang, Mohan Ju, Cuicui Chen, Dong Yang, Dongni Hou, Xinjun Tang, Xiaodan Zhu, Donghui Zhang, Lilin Wang, Shimeng Ji, Jinjun Jiang, and Yuanlin Song.
• Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai Respiratory Research Institute, Shanghai 200032, China.
• J Thorac Dis. 2018 Jan 1; 10 (1): 273-282.

BackgroundAcute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is the leading cause of high mortality in intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide. An effective marker for prognosis in ARDS is particularly important given the absence of effective treatment strategies aside from small tidal volume ventilation. Previous studies identified an association between the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and prognosis in critical patients. In this study, we explored the prognostic and predictive value of the NLR in ARDS patients.MethodsWe retrospectively included 275 ARDS patients treated at a single institute from 2008 to 2015. After excluding patients with chronic lung disease, acute myocardial infarction and missing data, 247 patients were ultimately included in the analysis. Clinical characteristics and experimental test data, including the NLR, were collected from medical records at 24 hours after the ARDS diagnosis. Independent prognostic factors were determined by multivariate Cox regression analysis. Subgroup stratification was performed according to different factors, and the continuous factors were divided according to the median values.ResultsThe NLR in survivors was significantly lower than that in non-survivors (P<0.001). We took the median NLR value as the cut-off point and further divided all patients into a high NLR group (NLR >14) and a low NLR group (NLR ≤14). We found that an NLR >14 was associated with a shorter overall survival (OS) (P=0.005). In the multivariate Cox regression model, we further identified an NLR >14 as an independent prognostic factor for OS [hazard ratio (HR) 1.532, (95% CI, 1.095-2.143), P=0.013]. Subgroup analysis showed that the prognostic value of the NLR was higher in hypertensive patients (P=0.009) and in patients with low red blood cell specific volume (P=0.013), high sodium (P=0.002) and high creatinine levels (P=0.017).ConclusionsThe NLR is potentially a predictive prognostic biomarker in ARDS patients.

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