Development and validation of novel nomograms for predicting the survival of patients after surgical resection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Background/Aims Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is associated with high mortality, even after surgical resection. The existing predictive models for survival have limitations. This study aimed to develop better nomograms for predicting overall survival (OS) and cancer‐specific survival (CSS) in PDAC patients after surgery. Methods A total of 6323 PDAC patients were retrospectively recruited from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database and randomly allocated into training, validation, and test cohorts. Multivariate Cox regression analysis was conducted to identify significant independent factors for OS and CSS, which were used for construction of nomograms. The performance was evaluated, validated, and compared with that of the 8th edition AJCC staging system. Results Ten independent factors were significantly correlated with OS and CSS. The 1‐, 3‐, and 5‐year OS rates were 40%, 20%, and 15%, and 1‐, 3‐, and 5‐year CSS rates were 45%, 24%, and 19%, respectively. The nomograms were calibrated well, with c‐indexes of 0.640 for OS and 0.643 for CSS, respectively. Notably, relative to the 8th edition AJCC staging system, the nomograms were able to stratify each AJCC stage into three prognostic subgroups for more robust risk stratification. Furthermore, the nomograms achieved significant clinical validity, exhibiting wide threshold probabilities and high net benefit. Performance assessment also showed high predictive accuracy and reliability. Conclusions The predictive ability and reliability of the established nomograms have been validated, and therefore, these nomograms hold potential as novel approaches to predicting survival and assessing survival risks for PDAC patients after surgery. In the present study, we constructed and validated nomograms for predicting the 1‐, 3‐, and 5‐year OS and CSS rates after surgical resection of PDAC. The nomograms established in the present study showed good performance for the prediction of OS and CSS, which was superior to that of the existing, conventional AJCC staging system with an improved net benefit. Therefore, these nomograms hold promise as novel prognosis models for improving the prediction of individualized postoperative survival and improving the care of PDAC patients following surgical resection.