Development and Validation of Nomograms to Predict Prognosis of Oral and Oropharyngeal Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma: A SEER-Based Study

Background: Due to the low incidence of mucoepidermoid carcinoma, there lacks sufficient studies for determining optimal treatment and predicting prognosis. The purpose of this study was to develop prognostic nomograms, to predict overall survival and disease-specific survival (DSS) of oral and oropharyngeal mucoepidermoid carcinoma patients, using the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Methods: Clinicopathological and follow-up data of patients diagnosed with oral and oropharyngeal mucoepidermoid carcinoma between 2004 and 2017 were collected from the SEER database. The Kaplan-Meier method with the log-rank test was employed to identify single prognostic factors. Multivariate Cox regression was utilized to identify independent prognostic factors. C-index, area under the ROC curve (AUC) and calibration curves were used to assess performance of the prognostic nomograms. Results: A total of 1230 patients with oral and oropharyngeal mucoepidermoid carcinoma were enrolled in the present study. After multivariate Cox regression analysis, age, sex, tumor subsite, T stage, N stage, M stage, grade and surgery were identified as independent prognostic factors for overall survival. T stage, N stage, M stage, grade and surgery were identified as independent prognostic factors for disease-specific survival. Nomograms were constructed to predict the overall survival and disease-specific survival based on the independent prognostic factors. The fitted nomograms possessed excellent prediction accuracy, with a C-index of 0.899 for OS prediction and 0.893 for DSS prediction. Internal validation by computing the bootstrap calibration plots, using the validation set, indicated excellent performance by the nomograms. Conclusion: The prognostic nomograms developed, based on individual clinicopathological characteristics, in the present study, accurately predicted the overall survival and disease-specific survival of patients with oral and oropharyngeal mucoepidermoid carcinoma.