Overall survival in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer after surgically primary tumor resected: a SEER-based nomogram analysis

Abstract

Background This study aimed to establish and validate a nomogram to predict overall survival in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer (mPC) after surgically primary tumor resected. Methods All mPC patients who underwent primary tumor resection at SEER database between 2004 and 2016 were identified. We randomly assigned two-thirds of the patients to the training group and one third to the validation group. In the training group, the Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to analyze survival outcomes. A univariate and multivariate cox regression analysis was used to identify significant prognostic factors for establishing a nomogram. The predictive accuracy and discriminative ability were measured by the concordance index (C-index) and risk group stratification. Results A total of 742 patients were included for analysis. Four significant prognostic factors were obtained and included in the nomogram. The nomogram showed an acceptable discrimination ability (C- index:0.711) and good calibration and was further validated in the validation cohort (C- index: 0.727). The nomogram total points (NTP) had the potential to stratify patients into 2-risk groups with a median OS of 11 and 4.5 months (P < 0.001), respectively. Conclusions The nomogram can provide considerable accuracy individual prediction OS outcomes in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer undergone primary tumor surgery and it can guide clinicians to make decisions in the clinical therapies.