Predicting recurrence within 5 years in Early-Stage lung adenocarcinoma with micropapillary and solid patterns

Micropapillary (MP) and solid (S) pathological patterns are recognized as high-risk patterns. Even early-stage invasive adenocarcinoma (IAC) with MP/S pathological patterns carry a high risk of postoperative recurrence. This study aimed to construct and validate machine learning (ML) models to predict recurrence within 5 years in patients with IAC with MP/S pathological components and tumor diameter ≤ 3 cm without lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis.

We retrospectively analyzed 974 patients from two centers. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to select independent predictive variables. Eight ML models were evaluated based on the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), calibration curves, and decision curve analysis (DCA). The contribution of variables was interpreted using SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method.

Univariate and multivariate analyses identified five independent predictors for the model: surgical procedure, consolidation-to-tumor ratio (CTR), visceral pleural invasion, epidermal growth factor receptor mutation status, and smoking history. The Neural Network model demonstrated the best performance, with an AUC of 0.794 in the training set, 0.764 in the test set and 0.775 in the validation set. Calibration curves showed good predictive accuracy, and DCA indicated substantial clinical utility across most risk thresholds. SHAP analysis identified CTR and surgical procedure as the most important predictive factors, highlighting their significant roles in postoperative recurrence.

We developed and validated a machine learning model integrating multidimensional clinicopathological features and imaging features to assess the 5-year recurrence risk in pN0M0 invasive adenocarcinoma (≤3 cm) patients with MP/S pathological components.