Establishment and Verification of a Nomogram for Predicting Survival in Patients with Small Intestinal Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

Background: This study aimed to develop and validate nomograms for predicting overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) in small intestinal gastrointestinal stromal tumors (SI GISTs).

Methods: Patients diagnosed with SI GISTs were retrieved from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database and further randomly divided into training and validating cohorts. Univariate and multivariate Cox analyses were conducted in the training set to determine independent prognostic factors to build nomograms for predicting 3- and 5-year OS and CSS. The performance of the nomograms was assessed by using the concordance index (C-index), calibration plot, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC).

Results: Data of a total of 776 patients with SI GISTs were retrospectively collected from the SEER database. The OS nomogram was constructed based on age, surgery, imatinib treatment, and American Joint Committee for Cancer (AJCC) stage, while the CSS nomogram incorporated age, surgery, tumor grade, and AJCC stage. In the training set, the C-index for the OS nomogram was 0.773 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 0.722-0.824) and for the CSS nomogram 0.806 (95% CI: 0.757-0.855). In the internal validation cohort, the C-index for the OS nomogram was 0.741, while for the CSS nomogram, it was 0.819. Well-corresponded calibration plots both in OS and CSS nomogram models were noticed. The comparisons of AUC values showed that the established nomograms exhibited superior discrimination power than the 7th Tumor-Node-Metastasis staging system.

Conclusion: Our nomogram can effectively predict 3- and 5-year OS and CSS in patients with SI GISTs, and its use can help improve the accuracy of personalized survival prediction and facilitate to provide constructive therapeutic suggestions.