A population-based predictive model identifying optimal candidates for primary and metastasis resection in patients with colorectal cancer with liver metastatic

BACKGROUND: The survival benefit of primary and metastatic resection for patients with colorectal cancer with liver metastasis (CRLM) has been observed, but methods for discriminating which individuals would benefit from surgery have been poorly defined. Herein, a predictive model was developed to stratify patients into sub-population based on their response to surgery. METHODS: We assessed the survival benefits for adults diagnosed with colorectal liver metastasis by comparing patients with curative surgery vs. those without surgery. CRLM patients enrolled in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database between 2004 and 2015 were identified for model construction. Other data including CRLM patients from our center were obtained for external validation. Calibration plots, the area under the curve (AUC), and decision curve analysis (DCA) were used to evaluate the performance of the nomogram compared with the tumor–node–metastasis (TNM) classification. The Kaplan–Meier analysis was performed to examine whether this model would distinguish patients who could benefit from surgery. RESULTS: A total of 1,220 eligible patients were identified, and 881 (72.2%) underwent colorectal and liver resection. Cancer-specific survival (CSS) for the surgery group was significantly better than that for the no-surgery group (41 vs. 14 months, p < 0.001). Five factors were found associated with CSS and adopted to build the nomograms, i.e., age, T stage, N stage, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and primary tumor position. The AUC of the CRLM nomogram showed a better performance in identifying patients who could obtain benefits in the surgical treatment, compared with TNM classification (training set, 0.826 [95% CI, 0.786–0.866] vs. 0.649 [95% CI, 0.598–0.701]; internal validation set, 0.820 [95% CI, 0.741–0.899] vs. 0.635 [95% CI, 0.539–0.731]; external validation set, 0.763 [95% CI, 0.691–0.836] vs. 0.626 [95% CI, 0.542–0.710]). The calibration curves revealed excellent agreement between the predicted and actual survival outcomes. The DCA showed that the nomogram exhibited more clinical benefits than the TNM staging system. The beneficial and surgery group survived longer significantly than the non-beneficial and surgery group (HR = 0.21, 95% CI, 0.17–0.27, p < 0.001), but no difference was observed between the non-beneficial and surgery and non-surgery groups (HR = 0.89, 95% CI, 0.71–1.13, p = 0.344). CONCLUSIONS: An accurate and easy-to-use CRLM nomogram has been developed and can be applied to identify optimal candidates for the resection of primary and metastatic lesions among CRLM patients.