Nomogram for predicting the prognosis of tumor patients with sepsis after gastrointestinal surgery

BACKGROUND: There were few studies on the prognosis of tumor patients with sepsis after gastrointestinal surgery and there was no relevant nomogram for predicting the prognosis of these patients. AIM: To establish a nomogram for predicting the prognosis of tumor patients with sepsis after gastrointestinal surgery in the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS: A total of 303 septic patients after gastrointestinal tumor surgery admitted to the ICU at Peking University Cancer Hospital from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2020 were analysed retrospectively. The model for predicting the prognosis of septic patients was established by the R software package. RESULTS: The most common infection site of sepsis after gastrointestinal surgery in the ICU was abdominal infection. The 90-d all-cause mortality rate was 10.2% in our study group. In multiple analyses, we found that there were statistically significant differences in tumor type, septic shock, the number of lymphocytes after ICU admission, serum creatinine and total operation times among tumor patients with sepsis after gastrointestinal surgery (P < 0.05). These five variables could be used to establish a nomogram for predicting the prognosis of these septic patients. The nomogram was verified, and the initial C-index was 0.861. After 1000 internal validations of the model, the C-index was 0.876, and the discrimination was good. The correction curve indicated that the actual value was in good agreement with the predicted value. CONCLUSION: The nomogram based on these five factors (tumor type, septic shock, number of lymphocytes, serum creatinine, and total operation times) could accurately predict the prognosis of tumor patients with sepsis after gastrointestinal surgery.