An overall survival predictive nomogram to identify high-risk patients among locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Developed based on the SEER database and validated institutionally.

Abstract

Locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (LA-NPC) patients, even at the same stage, have different prognoses. We aim to construct a prognostic nomogram for predicting the overall survival (OS) to identify the high-risk LA-NPC patients. Histologically diagnosed WHO type II and type III LA-NPC patients in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database were enrolled as the training cohort (n= 421), and LA-NPC patients from Shantou University Medical College Cancer Hospital (SUMCCH) served as the external validation cohort (n= 763). Variables were determined in the training cohort through Cox regression to form a prognostic OS nomogram, which was verified in the validation cohort, and compared with traditional clinical staging using the concordance index (C-index), Kaplan-Meier curves, calibration curves and decision curve analysis (DCA). Patients with scores higher than the specific cut-off value determined by the nomogram were defined as high-risk patients. Subgroup analyses and high-risk group determinants were explored. Our nomogram had a higher C-index than the traditional clinical staging method (0.67 vs. 0.60, p<0.001). Good agreement between the nomogram-predicted and actual survival were shown in the calibration curves and DCA, indicating a clinical benefit of the nomogram. High-risk patients identified by our nomogram had worse prognosis than the other groups, with a 5-year overall survival (OS) of 60.4%. Elderly patients at advanced stage and without chemotherapy had a tendency for high risk than the other patients. Our OS predictive nomogram for LA-NPC patients is reliable to identify high-risk patients.