BACKGROUND
Perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (pCCA) is a highly aggressive malignancy with poor prognosis. Accurate prediction is of great significance for patients’ survival outcome.
OBJECTIVE
The present study aimed to propose a prognostic nomogram for predicting the overall survival (OS) for patients with pCCA.
METHODS
We conducted a retrospective analysis in a total of 940 patients enrolled from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program and developed a nomogram based on the prognostic factors identified from the cox regression analysis. Concordance index (C-index), risk group stratification and calibration curves were adopted to test the discrimination and calibration ability of the nomogram with bootstrap method. Decision curves were also plotted to evaluate net benefits in clinical use against TNM staging system.
RESULTS
On the basis of multivariate analysis, five independent prognostic factors including age, summary stage, surgery, chemotherapy, together with radiation were selected and entered into the nomogram model. The C-index of the model was significantly higher than TNM system in the training set (0.703 vs 0.572, P<0.001), which was also proved in the validation set (0.718 vs 0.588, P<0.001). The calibration curves for 1-, 2-, and 3-year OS probabilities exhibited good agreements between the nomogram-predicted and the actual observation. Decision curves displayed that the nomogram obtained more net benefits than TNM staging system in clinical context. The OS curves of two distinct risk groups stratified by nomogram-predicted survival outcome illustrated statistical difference.
CONCLUSIONS
We established and validated an easy-to-use prognostic nomogram, which can provide more accurate individualized prediction and assistance in decision making for pCCA patients.
