Development and validation of nomograms for predicting overall and breast cancer-specific survival among patients with triple-negative breast cancer

Purpose: TNBC is generally more aggressive than other BC subtypes and has limited therapeutic options. We aimed to construct comprehensive and reliable nomograms to predict the OS and BCSS of TNBC patients to offer clinicians therapeutic guidance for improving the prognosis of TNBC patients. Patients and methods: We used the SEER 19 Cancer Registry to identify 21,419 eligible TNBC patients diagnosed from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015, and divided the database randomly into a training cohort (n=10,709) and a validation cohort (n=10,710). The log-rank test and Cox analysis together with a competing risk model were utilized to identify independent prognostic factors for OS and BCSS, which were then integrated to construct nomograms. Results: According to the training cohort, except for laterality, the following factors were all predictive of OS and BCSS: age at diagnosis, race, tumor size, number of positive lymph nodes, grade, and histological subtype. The 1-, 3-, and 5-year probabilities of BC-specific mortality were 2.7%, 12.5%, and 17.1%, respectively. The precision of the nomograms was assessed by the C-index value and calibration plot diagrams. The C-index value were 0.779 for OS and 0.793 for BCSS in the internal validation and 0.774 for OS and 0.792 for BCSS in the external validation. Both internal and external calibration plot diagrams showed good consistency between the actual and predicted outcomes, especially for 3- and 5-year OS and BCSS. Conclusion: These nomograms hold promise as a novel and accurate tool in predicting OS and BCSS of TNBC patients and could be used in clinical practice to assist clinicians in developing more effective therapeutic strategies and to evaluate prognostic personally.