Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survivors are at an increased risk of developing second primary malignancies, such as small cell lung cancer. This paper sought to establish a prognostic nomogram to assess overall survival (OS) in patients with second primary small cell lung cancer (SPSCLC) after NSCLC.
Methods: 420 patients who developed SPSCLC after NSCLC were randomly split into the training and validation groups. A nomogram was established by stepwise regression. Area under the curve (AUC) and calibration plots were applied to assess the prognostic performance of the nomogram. Concordance index (C-index), integrated discrimination improvement (IDI), net reclassification index (NRI) and decision curve analysis (DCA) were performed to compare the nomogram with the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 8th staging system. Survival risk classification was constructed based on the nomogram.
Results: Five variables were chosen to construct the nomogram. The AUC showed that it had a satisfactory discrimination ability. All calibration plots displayed good concordance between nomogram and observation. The C-index, IDI, NRI and DCA showed the nomogram was superior to the AJCC 8th staging system. The Kaplan-Meier curves suggested huge differences in prognosis among the three risk groups.
Conclusion: This study build a nomogram and risk stratification system for predicting probabilities of OS in patients with SPSCLC after NSCLC, which can help clinicians in individualized survival assessment and treatment decisions.
Keywords: nomogram, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), small cell lung cancer (SCLC), SEER database