An esophagectomy Surgical Apgar Score (eSAS)-based nomogram for predicting major morbidity in patients with esophageal carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Performing an esophagectomy for a malignancy presents an operation with an elevated risk of complications. The esophagectomy Surgical Apgar Score (eSAS) has been confirmed to be a strong predictor of major postoperative morbidity. The purpose of this study was to construct and establish an eSAS-based nomogram for predicting major morbidity after esophagectomy for esophageal carcinoma. METHODS: A total of 194 patients underwent radical esophagectomy for the malignant disease was analyzed by internal validation, and the clinical value was calculated on external validation (n=135). The 30-day major morbidity was recorded as the outcome. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis analyzed the preoperative and intraoperative variables. An eSAS-based nomogram was constructed to predict the risk of major postoperative morbidity. The verification curves for the performance were drawn. RESULTS: Major morbidity occurred in 34.04% (n=66) of cases. Based on the final regression analysis, we proved that the eSAS had a highly linear association with major morbidity after esophagectomy. We further constructed a nomogram integrating the eSAS and clinical predictors [body mass index (BMI), American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification, and diabetes mellitus] to predict the probability of major postoperative morbidity. The performance of the eSAS-based nomogram was assessed and proven to be clinically useful by internal and external validation. CONCLUSIONS: We constructed an eSAS-based nomogram that can effectively predict the risk of major morbidity after esophagectomy in patients with esophageal carcinoma. With a highly exact and exceedingly simple model, clinicians could more precisely ease the individual perioperative management for decreasing the postoperative complication.