Development and validation of nomograms for predicting the prognosis of early and late recurrence of advanced gastric cancer after radical surgery

Objective In this study, we aimed to explore the risk factors influencing post recurrence survival (PRS) of early recurrence (ER) and late recurrence (LR) in stage advanced gastric cancer (AGC) patients after radical surgery, respectively, and to develop predictive models in turn. Methods Medical records of 192 AGC patients who recurred after radical gastrectomy were retrospectively reviewed. They were randomly divided into the training and validation set at a ratio of 2:1. Nomograms were built based on risk factors influencing PRS of ER and LR explored by Cox regression analyses, respectively. Concordance index (C-index) values and calibration curves were used to evaluate predictive power of nomograms. Results Body mass index < 18.5 kg/m 2 , prealbumin level < 70.1 mg/l, positive lymph nodes ratio ≥ 0.486 and palliative treatment after recurrence were independent risk factors for the prognosis of ER. In contrast, prealbumin level < 170.1 mg/l, CEA ≥ 18.32 μg/l, tumor diameter ≥ 5.5 cm and palliative treatment after recurrence were independent risk factors for the prognosis of LR. The C-index value was 0.801 and 0.772 for ER and LR in the training set, respectively. The calibration curves of validation set showed a C-index value of 0.744 and 0.676 for ER and LR, respectively. Conclusions Nomograms which were constructed to predict the prognosis of ER and LR of AGC after surgery showed great predictive power and could provide reference for clinicians’ treatment strategies to some extent.