Work

Development and validation of a nomogram for predicting postoperative venous thromboembolism risk in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Few studies have specifically modeled the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) for postoperative hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients, although HCC is the third leading cause of cancer death worldwide. This study aimed to develop and validate a nomogram that accurately predicts the risk of VTE in patients after HCC surgery. AIM: To develop and validate a nomogram to accurately predict the risk of VTE in postoperative HCC patients by integrating clinical and laboratory risk factors. The model seeks to provide a user-friendly tool for identifying high-risk individuals who may benefit from targeted anticoagulation therapy, thereby improving clinical decision-making and patient outcomes. METHODS: receiver operating characteristic curves, calibration curves, decision curve analysis and other relevant metrics. RESULTS: Of 905 postoperative HCC patients were included in the study. The nomogram incorporated eight independent risk factors for VTE: Karnofsky Performance Scale, base disease, cancer stage (tumor-node-metastasis), chemotherapy, D-dimer concentration, white blood cell count, hemoglobin, and fibrinogen. The C-index for the nomogram model was 0.825 in the training cohort and 0.820 in the validation cohort, indicating good discriminative ability. Calibration plots of the model revealed high concordance between the predicted probabilities and observed outcomes. CONCLUSION: We developed and validated a novel nomogram that can accurately estimate the risk of VTE in individual postoperative HCC patients. This model can identify high-risk patients who may benefit from targeted anticoagulation therapy.

Source: World Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology

DOI: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i6.105790