Development and Validation of a Nomogram to Predict the Recurrence of HCC Patients Undergoing CECT After Ablation

We first aimed to compare the prognostic difference between the application of Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) and Non-enhanced computed tomography (NECT) in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) patients with early-stage immediately after ablation. We secondly propose to explore the risk factors for recurrence in patients undergoing CECT, and then develop a nomogram.

Clinical data were collected from 711 patients who received TACE combined with ablation from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2022, at Beijing Youan Hospital. According to the imaging methods applied after ablation, patients were categorized into the CECT group and the NECT group and then were compared by Kaplan-Meier (KM) curves. Lasso regression is used to screen risk factors for recurrence and the nomogram was plotted. Finally, discrimination, calibration plot, and decision curve analysis (DCA) were used to measure the performance of the nomogram.

The KM curve indicates that recurrence-free survival (RFS) was longer in the CECT group than in the NECT group (HR =0.759, 95% CI 0.606-0.951, P=0.016). Six variables were selected to construct the nomogram. 1-, 3-, and 5-year area under the curves (AUCs) (0.867, 0.731, 0.773 and 0.896, 0.784, 0.773) of the training and validation cohorts proved the good predictive performance of the nomogram. Calibration curves and DCA curves suggested accuracy and net clinical benefit rates. The nomogram enabled to classify of patients into three groups according to the risk of recurrence: low risk, intermediate risk, and high risk. There was a statistically significant difference in RFS between the two groups in the training and validation cohorts (P<0.001).

We demonstrated that HCC patients who underwent CECT evaluation after ablation had a better prognosis, making this evaluation method highly recommended for guiding clinical management.