Age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index (ACCI) is a significant factor for predicting survival after radical gastrectomy in patients with gastric cancer

INTRODUCTION: To assess the ability of the Age-Adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index (ACCI) to predict survival after radical gastrectomy in patients with gastric cancer (GC). METHOD: Data from patients with GC who underwent radical gastrectomy from January 2008 to December 2012 in Fujian Medical University Union Hospital were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were categorized into either high ACCI group or low ACCI group based on the effect of ACCI on long-term GC prognosis. 1:1 propensity score matching (PSM) was used to reduce confounding bias. To further analyze the impact of ACCI on the long-term prognosis of patients after radical gastrectomy, a nomogram was built based on the Cox proportional hazards regression model. RESULTS: A total of 1476 patients were included in the analysis. After PSM, there was no statistically significant differences in tumor location, tumor size and tumor stage between low ACCI group (429 cases) and high ACCI group (429 cases) (all P > 0.05). Before and after PSM, the incidence of postoperative complications in high ACCI group was significantly higher than that in low ACCI group (P < 0.05). The 5-year overall survival rate (OS) in low ACCI group was significantly higher than that in high ACCI group. Multivariate analysis showed that ACCI was an independent risk factor for OS (P < 0.05). The Harrell’s C-statistics (C-index) of TNMA, a prognostic evaluation system combining ACCI and TNM staging system, was significantly higher than that of TNM staging system in both the modeling and validation groups (all P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: ACCI was an independent risk factor for the long-term prognosis of GC patients after radical gastrectomy that could effectively improve the predictive efficacy of the TNM staging system for GC. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12893-019-0513-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.