Prognostic significance of the combination of preoperative hemoglobin and albumin levels and lymphocyte and platelet counts (HALP) in patients with renal cell carcinoma after nephrectomy

Background To evaluate the prognostic significance of the novel index combining preoperative hemoglobin and albumin levels and lymphocyte and platelet counts (HALP) in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients. Methods We enrolled 1360 patients who underwent nephrectomy in our institution from 2001 to 2010. The cutoff values for HALP, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio were defined by using X-tile software. Survival was analyzed by the Kaplan–Meier method, with differences analyzed by the log-rank test. Multivariate Cox proportional-hazards model was used to evaluate the prognostic significance of HALP for RCC. Results Low HALP was significantly associated with worse clinicopathologic features. Kaplan-Meier and log-rank tests revealed that HALP was strongly correlated with cancer specific survival (P