Prognostic Factors of Survival of Advanced Liver Cancer Patients Treated With Palliative Radiotherapy: A Retrospective Study

AIMS: Survival benefit of liver cancer patients who undergo palliative radiotherapy varies from person to person. The present study aims to identify indicators of survival of advanced liver cancer patients receiving palliative radiotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred and fifty-nine patients treated with palliative radiotherapy for advanced liver cancer were retrospectively assessed. Of the 159 patients, 103 patients were included for prediction model construction in training phase, while other 56 patients were analyzed for external validation in validation phase. In model training phase, clinical characteristics of included patients were evaluated by Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank test. Thereafter, multivariable Cox analysis was taken to further identify characteristics with potential for prediction. In validation phase, a separate dataset including 56 patients was used for external validation. Harrell’s C-index and calibration curve were used for model evaluation. Nomograms were plotted based on the model of multivariable Cox analysis. RESULTS: Thirty-one characteristics of patients were investigated in model training phase. Based on the results of Kaplan-Meier plots and log-rank tests, 6 factors were considered statistically significant. On multivariable Cox regression analysis, bone metastasis (HR = 1.781, P = 0.026), portal vein tumor thrombus (HR = 2.078, P = 0.015), alpha-fetoprotein (HR = 2.098, P = 0.007), and radiation dose (HR = 0.535, P = 0.023) show significant potential to predict the survival of advanced liver cancer patients treated with palliative radiotherapy. Moreover, nomograms predicting median overall survival, 1- and 2-year survival probability were plotted. The Harrell’s C-index of the predictive model is 0.709(95%CI, 0.649-0.769) and 0.735 (95%CI, 0.666-0.804) for training model and validation model respectively. Calibration curves of the 1- and 2-year overall survival of the predictive model indicate that the predicted probabilities of OS are very close to the actual observed outcomes both in training and validation phase. CONCLUSION: Bone metastasis, portal vein tumor thrombus, alpha-fetoprotein and radiation dose are independent prognostic factors for the survival of advanced liver cancer patients treated with palliative radiotherapy.