[Establishment of a Predictive Model for Chronic Cough after Pulmonary Resection]

Chronic cough after pulmonary resection is one of the most common complications, which seriously affects the quality of life of patients after surgery. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the risk factors of chronic cough after pulmonary resection and construct a prediction model.

The clinical data and postoperative cough of 499 patients who underwent pneumonectomy or pulmonary resection in The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China from January 2021 to June 2023 were retrospectively analyzed. The patients were randomly divided into training set (n=348) and validation set (n=151) according to the principle of 7:3 randomization. According to whether the patients in the training set had chronic cough after surgery, they were divided into cough group and non-cough group. The Mandarin Chinese version of Leicester cough questionnare (LCQ-MC) was used to assess the severity of cough and its impact on patients' quality of life before and after surgery. The visual analog scale (VAS) and the self-designed numerical rating scale (NRS) were used to evaluate the postoperative chronic cough. Univariate and multivariate Logistic regression analysis were used to analyze the independent risk factors and construct a model. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the discrimination of the model, and calibration curve was used to evaluate the consistency of the model. The clinical application value of the model was evaluated by decision curve analysis (DCA).

Multivariate Logistic analysis screened out that preoperative forced expiratory volume in the first second/forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC), surgical procedure, upper mediastinal lymph node dissection, subcarinal lymph node dissection, and postoperative closed thoracic drainage time were independent risk factors for postoperative chronic cough. Based on the results of multivariate analysis, a Nomogram prediction model was constructed. The area under the ROC curve was 0.954 (95%CI: 0.930-0.978), and the cut-off value corresponding to the maximum Youden index was 0.171, with a sensitivity of 94.7% and a specificity of 86.6%. With a Bootstrap sample of 1000 times, the predicted risk of chronic cough after pulmonary resection by the calibration curve was highly consistent with the actual risk. DCA showed that when the preprobability of the prediction model probability was between 0.1 and 0.9, patients showed a positive net benefit.

Chronic cough after pulmonary resection seriously affects the quality of life of patients. The visual presentation form of the Nomogram is helpful to accurately predict chronic cough after pulmonary resection and provide support for clinical decision-making.