Nomogram for Predicting Anastomotic Leakage after Rectal Cancer Surgery in Elderly Patients with Dysfunctional...

Anastomotic leakage after rectal cancer surgery in elderly patients is a critical challenge. Many risk factors have been found and many interventions tried, but anastomotic leakage in elderly patients remains difficult to deal with. This study aimed to create a nomogram for predicting anastomotic leakage after rectal surgery in elderly rectal cancer patients with dysfunctional stomata.

We collected data from 326 consecutive elderly patients with dysfunctional stomata after rectal cancer surgery at the Sixth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University from January 2014 to December 2019. Risk factors of anastomotic leakage were identified with multivariate logistic regression and used to create a nomogram. Predictive performance was evaluated by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve.

American Society of Anesthesiologists score ≥3, male sex, and neoadjuvant radiotherapy were identified as significantly associated factors that could be combined for accurate prediction of anastomotic leakage on multivariate logistic regression and development of a nomogram.The area under the ROC curve for this model was 0.645. The C-index value for this model was 0.645, indicating moderate predictive ability of the risk of anastomotic leakage.

The nomogram showed good ability to predict anastomotic leakage in elderly patients with rectal cancer after surgery, and might be helpful in providing a reference point for selection of surgical procedures and perioperative treatment.