Predicting cancer-specific mortality in patients with parotid gland carcinoma by competing risk nomogram

Head Neck. 2021 Dec;43(12):3888-3898. doi: 10.1002/hed.26890. Epub 2021 Oct 11.

Abstract

Background: The aim of the present study was to establish a competing risk nomogram to predict parotid gland cancer-specific mortality (PGC-SM).

Methods: Seven thousand nine hundred and sixty-two patients extracted from SEER database were randomly categorized into training and validation sets. The competing risk model was used to identify factors associated with PGC-SM. The nomogram was evaluated via concordance indexes (C-indexes), calibration plots, and decision curve analysis (DCA).

Results: Male, elderly, white, widowed, larger tumor, no surgery, advanced tumor grade, lymph node (LN) metastasis, adenocarcinoma (ADC), and higher TNM stage were associated with higher incidence of PGC-SM. Calibration plots showed that the nomogram was well calibrated. C-indexes for nomogram were 0.84 (95% CI: 0.81-0.86) and 0.84 (95% CI: 0.82-0.86) in training and validation sets, respectively. DCA demonstrated the clinical usefulness of nomogram.

Conclusions: The competing risk nomogram shows high performance in predicting PGC-SM, which might enable clinicians formulate suitable treatment protocols for patients with parotid gland carcinoma (PGC).

Keywords: cancer-specific mortality; competing risk model; cumulative incidence; nomogram; parotid gland carcinoma.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adenocarcinoma / mortality*
  • Adenocarcinoma / pathology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Neoplasm Staging
  • Nomograms*
  • Parotid Gland / pathology
  • Parotid Gland / surgery
  • Prognosis
  • SEER Program
  • Salivary Gland Neoplasms / mortality*
  • Salivary Gland Neoplasms / pathology