Establishment of inflammation biomarkers-based nomograms to predict prognosis of advanced colorectal cancer patients based on real world data

Purpose To establish three novel prognostic nomograms with inflammatory factors for advanced colorectal cancer (ACRC), right-sided colon cancer (RSCC) and left-sided colorectal cancer (LSCRC) according to real world data. Materials and methods ACRC patients receiving medicine therapy from January 1st, 2005 to September 31th, 2015 in Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center were enrolled. Inflammatory indicators such as the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), the platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen 19–9 (CA 19–9), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and C-reactive protein (CRP) were analyzed for establishing nomograms predicting overall survival (OS). Concordance index (C-index) determined predictive accuracy and discriminative ability. Results Our study selected 807 ACRC patients, 29.6% RSCC and 70.4% LSCRC. Median OS was 23.36 months. Patients at lower level of NLR, PLR, CEA, CA 19–9, LDH and CRP showed longer OS (P < 0.001). For all patients, pathological grade (P = 0.018), treatments (P = 0.042), sidedness (P = 0.003), NLR (P < 0.001), CA 19–9 (P < 0.001), LDH (P < 0.001) and CRP (P = 0.0012) contributed to OS independently. For RSCC, pathological grade (P = 0.022), CA 19–9 (P < 0.001), LDH (P < 0.001) and CRP (P = 0.001) were significantly related with OS. For LSCRC patients, treatments (cetuximab vs chemotherapy: P = 0.008; bevacizumab vs chemotherapy: P = 0.166), NLR (P < 0.001), CA 19–9 (P = 0.030) and LDH (P < 0.001) were independent factors for OS. Final models showed acceptable internal validity with C-indexes of 0.687, 0.697 and 0.667 in all, RSCC and LSCRC patients. Conclusions Inflammatory factors enrolled in the proposed nomograms showed accurately individualized prognostic prediction, and prognostic factors for RSCC and LSCRC were different.