A nomogram for predicting overall survival in patients with low-grade endometrial stromal sarcoma: A population-based analysis

Abstract

Background: Low-grade endometrial stromal sarcoma (LG-ESS) is a rare tumor that lacks a prognostic prediction model. Our study aimed to develop a nomogram to predict overall survival of LG-ESS patients.

Methods: A total of 1172 patients confirmed to have LG-ESS between 1988 and 2015 were selected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. They were further divided into a training cohort and a validation cohort. The Akaike information criterion was used to select variables for the nomogram. The discrimination and calibration of the nomogram were evaluated using concordance index (C-index), area under time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve (time-dependent AUC), and calibration plots. The net benefits of the nomogram at different threshold probabilities were quantified and compared with those of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) criteria-based tumor staging using decision curve analysis (DCA). Net reclassification index (NRI) and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) were also used to compare the nomogram's clinical utility with that of the FIGO criteria-based tumor staging. The risk stratifications of the nomogram and the FIGO criteria-based tumor staging were compared.

Results: Seven variables were selected to establish the nomogram for LG-ESS. The C-index (0.814 for the training cohort and 0.837 for the validation cohort) and the time-dependent AUC (> 0.7) indicated satisfactory discriminative ability of the nomogram. The calibration plots showed favorable consistency between the prediction of the nomogram and actual observations in both the training and validation cohorts. The NRI values (training cohort: 0.271 for 5-year and 0.433 for 10-year OS prediction; validation cohort: 0.310 for 5-year and 0.383 for 10-year OS prediction) and IDI (training cohort: 0.146 for 5-year and 0.185 for 10-year OS prediction; validation cohort: 0.177 for 5-year and 0.191 for 10-year OS prediction) indicated that the established nomogram performed significantly better than the FIGO criteria-based tumor staging alone (P < 0.05). Furthermore, DCA showed that the nomogram was clinically useful and had better discriminative ability to recognize patients at high risk than the FIGO criteria-based tumor staging.

Conclusions: A prognostic nomogram was developed and validated to assist clinicians in evaluating prognosis of LG-ESS patients.

Keywords: FIGO criteria-based tumor staging; Low-grade endometrial stromal sarcoma (LG-ESS); nomogram; overall survival; prognostic model; risk stratification.