Herbert Loong, Advisor at Greater Bay Area International Clinical Trial Institute, shared on X:
“Throwback Revisiting our 2020 ESMO, ESMO Open paper with Carlos Wong and team: do comorbidities and simple blood counts predict survival in sarcoma?
Short answer: yes.
A routine NLR at diagnosis nearly halved 5-year survival (66% → 36%).
We used Hong Kong’s territory-wide Hospital Authority database to assemble 3,358 bone and soft-tissue sarcoma patients diagnosed 2004-2018.
At the time, the largest population-based sarcoma cohort reported.
Comorbidities:
- Common at diagnosis: >20% of bone and >30% of soft-tissue sarcoma patients had at least one
- Diabetes was the most frequent (9.8%), rising to 12.5% by 5 years
- Mortality rose stepwise with Charlson Comorbidity Index, even after adjusting for age
Blood indices
- 5-yr OS was 66% with NLR <2.5 vs 36% with NLR ≥2.5
- Patients with both high NLR and PLR fared worst
- he added risk plateaued at higher values, a non-linear effect worth noting for anyone building nomograms.
Why it still matters: Many sarcoma patients already see a doctor for something else.
The endocrinologist treating someone’s diabetes may be the first to hear about a rapidly growing lump.
Raise the index of suspicion early, and manage comorbidities actively once sarcoma is diagnosed.
Caveat: diagnoses came from coding, without histology-level data, so this is a macro view across subtypes.
Title: Prevalence and prognostic impact of comorbidities and peripheral blood indices in sarcomas
Authors: Herbert Ho-fung Loong, Carlos King Ho Wong, Yihui Wei, Sampson Sui Chun Kwan, Yingjun Zhang, Teresa Tse, Yat-Ming Lau, Linda K.S. Leung, Gordon C.H. Tang
Other articles about Sarcoma on OnccoDaily.