Brain metastasis is a major cause leading to the failure of treatment management for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. The goal of this study was to establish an effective nomogram for prediction of brain metastases of resected NSCLC patients.
We retrospectively investigated 637 operable NSCLC patients who received treatment at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, China. A Cox proportional hazards regression model was performed to identify significant risk factors, and a nomogram was developed for predicting 3- and 5-year brain metastases rates.
Multivariate analysis identified four independent risk factors: neuron-specific enolase, histological type, number of metastatic lymph nodes, and tumor grade, and a nomogram was developed based on these factors. The effectiveness of the nomogram was validated using an internal bootstrap resampling approach, showing that the nomogram exhibited a sufficient level of discrimination according to the C-index (0.74, 95 % confidence interval 0.67-0.82).
The nomogram developed in this study demonstrated its discrimination capability for predicting 3- and 5-year occurrence of brain metastases, and can be used to identify high-risk patients.