A nomogram predicting the probability of primary breast cancer survival at 2- and 5-years using pathological and...

Our objective was to develop a nomogram to predict individual overall survival (OS) for primary breast cancer, based on pathological and biological tumor parameters.

A retrospective study in a cohort of 180 patients with primary breast cancer was used to build the nomogram. Pathological factors and tumor proteases measured prospectively in primary tumors were used. A multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to explore the relationship with OS, and regression coefficients were used to build the nomogram. The nomogram was internally validated with 200 bootstrap re-samples.

The final variables included in the nomogram comprised tumor size (P = 0.04), nodal pathological status (P = 0.01), estrogen receptor status (P = 0.04), urokinase plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1; P = 0.02), thymidine kinase (P = 0.03), and cathepsin D (P = 0.004). The predictive accuracy of the nomogram at estimating the probability of OS, at both 2 and 5 years, was respectively 0.874 and 0.832 before and after calibration.

A nomogram to predict 2- and 5-year OS in BC, using histological and biological parameters was successfully developed. This prognostic tool should prove useful in decision-making and therapeutic research.