[Re-visiting the Pronopall score ten years later: A multicenter retrospective study]

The Pronopall score, which distinguishes 3 prognostic groups in patients with advanced cancer, was initially proposed in 2008 and validated in a study published in 2018 but including patients between 2009 and 2010. Since the last decade, cancer management and therapeutic options have progressed. The objective of this study was to confirm the value of this score in patients with digestive and thoracic cancer.

From July 2019 to November 2020, this retrospective multi-center study included patients with digestive or thoracic cancers who fulfilled the same inclusion criteria as those used in the initial study, and in whom the Pronopall score could be calculated using its four variables (albumin serum level, LDH level, ECOG score, number of metastatic sites). Survival curves were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method.

One hundred patients were included. According to the Pronopall score, patients were separated into group A (score 8-10, 7 patients), group B (score 4-7, 41 patients) and group C (score 0-3, 52 patients). Median overall survival was 73 days, CI [17-129], 228 days, CI [128-328] and 575 days, CI [432-718] for groups A, B and C, respectively. Survival at 2 months was 28 % for population A, 61 % for population B, and 94 % for population C.

This study confirms that the Pronopall score still allows clinically relevant discrimination of patients, score C being associated with a good prognosis compared to scores A and B.