Development and validation of a nomogram for predicting overall survival in patients with early-onset endometrial cancer

Abstract

Background This study aimed to investigate the differences in the clinicopathological characteristics of younger and older patients with endometrial cancer (EC) and develop a nomogram to assess the prognosis of early onset EC in terms of overall survival. Methods Patients diagnosed with EC from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database between 2004 and 2015 were selected. Clinicopathological characteristics were compared between younger and older patients, and survival analysis was performed for both groups. Prognostic factors affecting overall survival in young patients with EC were identified using Cox regression. A nomogram was created and internal validation was performed using the consistency index, decision curve analysis, receiver operating characteristic curves, and calibration curves. External validation used data from 70 patients with early onset EC. Finally, Kaplan-Meier curves were plotted to compare survival outcomes across the risk subgroups. Results A total of 1042 young patients and 12,991 older patients were included in this study. Younger patients were divided into training (732) and validation (310) cohorts in a 7:3 ratio. Cox regression analysis identified age, tumorsize, grade, FIGO stage(International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics) and surgery as independent risk factors for overall survival, and a nomogram was constructed based on these factors. Internal and external validations demonstrated the good predictive power of the nomogram. In particular, the C-index for the overall survival nomogram was 0.832 [95% confidence interval (0.797–0.844)] in the training cohort and 0.839 (0.810–0.868) in the internal validation cohort. The differences in the Kaplan-Meier curves between the different risk subgroups were statistically significant. Conclusions In this study, a nomogram for predicting overall survival of patients with early onset endometrial cancer based on the SEER database was developed to help assess the prognosis of patients and guide clinical treatment.