Background: To evaluate the clinical significance of tumor response to induction chemotherapy (IC) in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (LANPC) patients and further to develop a nomogram for predicting survival prognosis.
Methods: A total of 498 patients with stage III-IVA NPC applying IC and concurrent chemotherapy were reviewed (training cohort, n = 376; validation cohort, n = 122).
Results: Tumor response was an independent predictor for clinical outcomes. The nomogram included age, N stage, pretreatment Epstein-Barr virus DNA, lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio, and tumor response achieved an ideal C-index of 0.703 (95% CI 0.655-0.751) in the validation cohort for predicting overall survival (OS), which outperformed than that of the TNM system alone (C-index, 0.670, 95% CI: 0.622-0.718). In addition, the nomogram could successfully classified patients into different risk groups.
Conclusions: We established and validated a precise and convenient nomogram based on tumor response for predicting the OS of LANPC patients.
Keywords: induction chemotherapy; nasopharyngeal carcinoma; nomogram; survival; tumor response.
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