Construction and validation of a novel prognostic nomogram for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma: a SEER-based study

Objective We aimed to establish and validate nomograms to evaluate overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (MRCC). Methods Between 2010 and 2015, the clinical information of patients with MRCC was selected using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. Two nomograms were constructed based on Cox regression analysis, and their prediction accuracy was evaluated by concordance index (C-index), receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and decision curve analysis (DCA). Results After propensity score matching, there were 568 patients with MRCC in the training group and 568 in the validation group. Multivariate analyses revealed that age, residence, pathology, T stage, N stage, surgery, and metastatic sites were independent prognostic factors for the OS and CSS of MRCC. The C-index and ROC curves indicated that the two nomograms of OS and CSS showed satisfactory discriminative power. Furthermore, DCA displayed that the nomograms achieved more clinical net benefit than the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system. Conclusion We constructed and validated two effective prognostic nomograms for patients with MRCC that accurately predicted the probabilities of 1-, 2-, and 3-year OS and CSS.