Prognostic nomogram for post-surgical treatment with adjuvant TACE in hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective This study sought to establish an effective and reliable prognostic nomogram to guide the decision for post-surgical adjuvant transarterial chemoembolization (PA-TACE) in patients with hepatitis B virus-related (HBV) hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Results The 1, 3, 5-year overall survival rates were, respectively, 87.7%, 52.1% and 28.3% in the patients from the derivation set and 91.7%, 57.1% and 34.1% in those from the validation set. Five risk factors (HBV-DNA level, platelet count, vascular invasion, change of Child-Pugh score, and tumor diameter) in the multivariate analysis were significantly associated with prognosis. The statistical nomogram incorporated these five factors achieved good calibration and discriminatory abilities with c-index of 0.75 (95% CI 0.67 to 0.83). The findings were supported by the independent external validation set (c-index, 0.69; 95% CI 0.56 to 0.83). Patients who had a nomogram score of less than 180 was considered to have higher survival benefit from PA-TACE. Methods The nomogram was established based on data obtained from a retrospective study on 235 consecutive patients with HBV HCC who received PA-TACE as an initial therapy from 2006 to 2010 in our center. 84 patients who were collected at another institution between 01/2008 and 12/2010 served as an external validation set. The prognostic nomogram was developed based on the data obtained before the PA-TACE procedure. Predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of the nomogram were assessed by concordance index (C-index), calibration curves, and validation set. Conclusion The novel nomogram may achieve an optimal prognostic prediction for PA-TACE in HBV-related HCC.