A combined postoperative nomogram for survival prediction in clear cell renal carcinoma

To investigate and validate the prognostic value of nomogram models for predicting disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC).

In this retrospective study, 223 patients (age 54.38 ± 10.93 years) with pathologically confirmed ccRCC who underwent resection and lymph node dissection between March 2010 and September 2018 were investigated. All patients were randomly divided into training (n = 155) and validation (n = 68) cohorts. Radiomics features were extracted from computed tomography (CT) images in the unenhanced, corticomedullary, and nephrographic phases. Radiomic score was calculated and combined with clinicopathological factors for model construction and nomogram development. Clinicopathological factors and imaging features were collected at initial diagnosis. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between the radiomics signature and prognosis outcomes.

There were four prognostic factors for predicting DFS and five factors for predicting OS in our nomogram model (P < 0.05). The radiomics signature correlated independently with DFS (hazard ratio = 27; P < 0.001) and OS (hazard ratio = 25; P < 0.001). The nomogram showed excellent performance (C-index = 0.825) for predicting DFS. The combined nomogram also showed the highest C-index for OS (C-index = 0.943), which was verified in the validation dataset.

The combined nomogram model based on radiomics, clinicopathological factors, and preoperative CT features can accurately perform prognosis and survival analysis and can potentially be used for preoperative non-invasive survival prediction in ccRCC patients.