Objective  To investigate the influencing factors for the clinical remission of advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, establish an individualized nomogram model to predict the clinical remission of advanced ESCC with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and evaluate its efficacy, providing serve for the preoperative adjuvant treatment of ESCC.Methods  The clinical data of patients with esophageal cancer who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy (nedaplatin 80 mg/m², day 3+docetaxel 75 mg/m², day 1, 2 cycles, 21 days per cycle interval) in the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College from February 2016 to August 2020 were analyzed retrospectively. According to the WHO criteria for efficacy assessment of solid tumors, tumors were divided into complete remission (CR), partial remission (PR), stable disease (SD) and progressive disease (PD). CR and PR were defined as effective neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and SD and PD were defined as ineffective neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to analyze the influencing factors for the short-term efficacy of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The R software was used to establish a nomogram model for predicting the clinical remission of advanced ESCC with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and Bootstrap method for internal verification of the model. C-index, calibration curve and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to evaluate the predictive performance of the nomogram.Results  Finally 115 patients were enrolled, including 93 males and 22 females, aged 40-75 (64.0±8.0) years. After receiving docetaxel+nedaplatin neoadjuvant chemotherapy for 2 cycles, there were 9 patients with CR, 56 patients with PR, 43 patients with SD and 7 patients with PD. Among them, chemotherapy was effective (CR+PR) in 65 patients and ineffective (SD+PD) in 50 patients, with the clinical effective rate of about 56.5% (65/115). Univariate analysis showed that there were statistical differences in smoking history, alcoholism history, tumor location, tumor differentiation degree, and cN stage before chemotherapy between the effective neoadjuvant chemotherapy group and the ineffective neoadjuvant chemotherapy group (P<0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that low-differentiation advanced ESCC had the worst clinical response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, moderately-highly differentiated ESCC responded better (P<0.05). Stage cN0 advanced ESCC responded better to neoadjuvant chemotherapy than stage cN1 and cN2 (P<0.05). The C-index and the area under the ROC curve of the nomogram were both 0.763 (95%CI 0.676-0.850), the calibration curve fit well, the best critical value of the nomogram calculated by the Youden index was 70.04 points, and the sensitivity and specificity of the critical value were 80.0% and 58.0%, respectively.Conclusion The established clinical prediction model has good discrimination and accuracy, and can provide a reference for individualized analysis of the clinical remission of advanced ESCC with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and the screening of new adjuvant treatment subjects.

Citation： YANG Hao, YANG Linqi, WANG Zhi, XIE Fei, FU Maoyong. Establishment and evaluation of a predictive model for clinical remission of advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Chinese Journal of Clinical Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, 2023, 30(5): 690-698. doi: 10.7507/1007-4848.202103132 Copy