Background: Esophageal carcinoma is an invasive malignancy with a poor prognosis. Inflammatory cells are related to the prognosis in many malignancies; however, the prognostic values of preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) and platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCCs) are contentious. Methods: We performed a retrospective study on 178 patients who had proven ESCC and underwent R0 resection. A complete peripheral blood cell count on all patients 1 week before surgery was used to calculate NLR, LMR and PLR. All patients were grouped by the median count of NLR, LMR and PLR respectively. Kaplan-Meier curves were adopted to test the difference of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) between the high group of NLR, LMR and PLR and the low group. All data analysis was performed by SPSS. P<0.05 was assigned to admit statistical significance. Results: The median follow-up after the surgery was 39 months. The preoperative LMR showed no significant association with the OS [hazard ratio (HR) =0.733, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.397-1.353, P=0.321] and DFS (HR =0.850, 95% CI: 0.491-1.473, P=0.562). Neither NLR nor PLR exhibited a significant correlation with OS or DFS. Conclusions: NLR, LMR, and PLR could not take the roles of prognostic biomarkers for patients with operable ESCCs.