No abstract

In a previous study in patients with intracranial hemorrhage (ICH), we found an association between high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) with poor short-term mortality. In the current study, this preliminary finding was validated using an independent patient cohort. A total of 181 ICH patients (from January 2016 to December 2017) were included. Diagnosis was confirmed using computed tomography (CT) in all cases. Patient survival (up to 30 days) was compared between subjects with high NLR (above the 7.35 cutoff; n = 74) versus low NLR (≤ 7.35; n = 107) using Kaplan-Meier analysis. A multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify factors that influenced the 30-day mortality. Correlation between NLR with other relevant factors (e.g., C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen) was examined using Spearman correlation analysis. The 30-day mortality was 19.3% (35/181) in the entire sample, 37.8% (28/74) in the high-NLR group, and 6.5% (7/107) in the low-NLR group (P < 0.001). In comparison to the low-NLR group, the high-NLR group had higher rate of intraventricular hemorrhage (29.7 vs. 16.8%), ICH volume (median 23.9 vs. 6.0 cm3) and ICH score (median 1.5 vs. 0), and lower GCS score (9.4 ± 4.5 vs. 12.9 ± 3.2). An analysis that divided the samples into three equal parts based on NLR also showed increasing 30-day mortality with incremental NLR (1.6, 15.0, and 41.7% from lowest to highest NLR tertile, P for trend < 0.001). Kaplan-Meier curve showed higher 30-day mortality in subjects with high NLR than those with low NLR (P < 0.001 vs. low-NLR group, log-rank test). High NLR (> 7.35) is associated with poor short-term survival in acute ICH patients.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Results: A total of 275 subjects were included in the analysis: 235 survived for at least 30 days; the remaining 40 subjects died within 30 days. The patients who died within 30 days had higher ICH score, larger ICH volume, and lower GCS score (all P < 0.05). In comparison with the baseline (NLR T1 ), NLR at 24-48 hours (NLR T2 ) and 5-7 days (NLR T3 ) was significantly higher in patients who died within 30 days (P < 0.05), but not in patients surviving for >30 days. In the multivariate analysis, the 30-day mortality was associated with both NLR T2 (OR 1.112, 95%CI 1.032-1.199, P = 0.006) and NLR T3 (OR 1.163, 95%CI 1.067-1.268, P = 0.001). Spearman correlation analysis showed that both NLR T2 and NLR T3 correlated inversely with GCS score and positively with ICH score and ICH volume at the baseline. Conclusions:Early rise of NLR predicts 30-day mortality in patients with spontaneous ICH.