CD8A and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Even though low NLR and a high CD8+ TIL density were both associated with a better prognosis, we did not find a significant relationship between these two parameters, therefore indicating that the NLR could not be used as a surrogate marker of TIL infiltration in HNSCC, and more importantly, the NLR was found to be the strongest predictor of patient prognosis among the different parameters of immune TME jointly evaluated in our study.