A web-based prognostic nomogram for the cancer specific survival of elderly patients with T1-T3N0M0 renal pelvic transitional cell carcinoma based on the surveillance, epidemiology, and end results database

BACKGROUND: At present, there are few studies on renal pelvic transitional cell carcinoma (RPTCC) in elderly patients in the literature. The study aims to establish a new nomogram of cancer-specific survival (CSS) in elderly patients with T1-T3N0M0 RPTCC and validate its reliability. METHODS: This study downloaded the data of 1375 elderly patients with T1-T3N0M0 RPTCC in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Final Results (SEER) database from 2004 to 2018. Patients were randomly divided into training cohort (n = 977) and validation cohort (n = 398). Proportional subdistribution hazard analyse was applied to determine independent prognostic factors. Based on these factors, we constructed a compting risk model nomogram. We use the calibration plots, the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC), concordance index (C-index), and decision curve analysis (DCA) to validate predictive performance and clinical applicability. Patients were divided into low-risk group and high-risk group based on nomogram risk score. Kaplan–Meier curve was applied to analyze the difference in survival curve between the two groups of patients. RESULTS: We found that the risk factors affecting CSS in elderly patients with T1-T3N0M0 RPTCC are surgery, AJCC stage, laterality, tumor size, histological grade, and tumour laterality. Based on these factors, we established a nomogram to predict the CSS of RPTCC patients at 1-, 3-, and 5-year. The calibration plots showed that the predicted value was highly consistent with the observed value. In the training cohort and validation cohort, the C-index of the nomogram were 0.671(95% CI 0.622–0.72) and 0.679(95% CI 0.608–0.750), respectively, the AUC showed similar results. The DCA suggests that namogram performs better than the AJCC stage system. The Kaplan–Meier curve showed that CSS of patients was significantly higher in the low-risk group. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, the SEER database was used for the first time to create and validate a new nomogram prediction model for elderly patients with T1-T3N0M0 RPTCC. Compared with the traditional AJCC stage system, our new nomogram can more accurately predict the CSS of elderly patients with T1-T3N0M0 RPTCC, which is helpful for patient prognosis assessment and treatment strategies selection. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12894-022-01028-1.