Published online Oct 7, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i37.5655
Peer-review started: July 5, 2019
First decision: August 2, 2019
Revised: August 30, 2019
Accepted: September 9, 2019
Article in press: August 2, 2019
Published online: October 7, 2019
Processing time: 88 Days and 12.3 Hours
The factors affecting the prognosis and role of adjuvant therapy in advanced gallbladder carcinoma (GBC) after curative resection remain unclear.
To provide a survival prediction model to patients with GBC as well as to identify the role of adjuvant therapy.
Patients with curatively resected advanced gallbladder adenocarcinoma (T3 and T4) were selected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database between 2004 and 2015. A survival prediction model based on Bayesian network (BN) was constructed using the tree-augmented naïve Bayes algorithm, and composite importance measures were applied to rank the influence of factors on survival. The dataset was divided into a training dataset to establish the BN model and a testing dataset to test the model randomly at a ratio of 7:3. The confusion matrix and receiver operating characteristic curve were used to evaluate the model accuracy.
A total of 818 patients met the inclusion criteria. The median survival time was 9.0 mo. The accuracy of BN model was 69.67%, and the area under the curve value for the testing dataset was 77.72%. Adjuvant radiation, adjuvant chemotherapy (CTx), T stage, scope of regional lymph node surgery, and radiation sequence were ranked as the top five prognostic factors. A survival prediction table was established based on T stage, N stage, adjuvant radiotherapy (XRT), and CTx. The distribution of the survival time (>9.0 mo) was affected by different treatments with the order of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy (cXRT) > adjuvant radiation > adjuvant chemotherapy > surgery alone. For patients with node-positive disease, the larger benefit predicted by the model is adjuvant chemoradiotherapy. The survival analysis showed that there was a significant difference among the different adjuvant therapy groups (log rank, surgery alone vs CTx, P < 0.001; surgery alone vs XRT, P = 0.014; surgery alone vs cXRT, P < 0.001).
The BN-based survival prediction model can be used as a decision-making support tool for advanced GBC patients. Adjuvant chemoradiotherapy is expected to improve the survival significantly for patients with node-positive disease.
Core tip: A Bayesian network model was constructed to predict the survival time for patients with advanced gallbladder carcinoma (GBC) after curative resection from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, with a model accuracy of 69.67%, and the area under the curve for the testing dataset was 77.72%. Adjuvant radiation, chemotherapy, and T stage were ranked as the top three prognostic factors by importance measures. The prediction model supported the role of adjuvant therapy for advanced GBC patients after curative resection. Adjuvant chemoradiotherapy is expected to improve the survival more significantly for patients with node-positive disease.