Lymphocyte count and NLR as predictive value for the severity of acute cholangitis

OBJECTIVE: Acute cholangitis is a serious infectious condition in which systemic complications occur and can lead to mor-tality. In this study, we tried to elucidate the relationship between lymphocyte count and neutro-phil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) with disease severity in patients with acute cholangitis. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this retrospective analysis, 633 patients who met the definitive diagnosis criteria for acute cholangitis were enrolled as the study group. In the same period, 155 patients without acute cholangitis who had normal inflammatory markers and under-went endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancrea-tography (ERCP) were included in the study as the control group. The lymphocyte count, neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and platelet -lymphocyte ratio (PLR) of the acute cholangitis group, the control group, and the acute cholangitis group were compared according to the severity of cholangitis.RESULTS: There was a statistically significant correlation between the severity of cholangitis and the degree of lymphocytopenia (p<0.05). It was observed that as the disease severity in-creased, the proportion of patients with normal lymphocytopenia degree decreased, and abnor-mal findings increased. It was seen that the NLR and PLR results of the patients increased as the severity of cholangitis increased. CONCLUSIONS: As a result, one can con-clude that the increase in the severity of cholan-gitis caused an increase in NLR and PLR and a decrease in lymphocytes. Although the increase in NLR and lymphocytopenia results were con-sidered statistically significant, the increase in PLR was not at an acceptable level.

Automated summary

This study revealed a significant correlation between the severity of acute cholangitis and the degree of lymphocytopenia, NLR, and PLR. As the severity of the disease increased, the proportion of patients with normal lymphocyte count decreased, while abnormal findings and NLR and PLR levels increased.