A Nomogram to Predict the Pathologic Complete Response of Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Based on Simple Laboratory Indicators

Background. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients who achieve a pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) have better prognoses. Objective. This study aimed to develop an intuitive nomogram based on simple laboratory indexes to predict the pCR of standard NAC in TNBC patients. Methods. A total of 80 TNBC patients who received eight cycles of thrice-weekly standard NAC (anthracycline and cyclophosphamide followed by taxane) and subsequently underwent surgery in Zhejiang Cancer Hospital were retrospectively enrolled, and data on their pretreatment clinical features and multiple simple laboratory indexes were collected. The optimal cut-off values of the laboratory indexes were determined by the Youden index using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses. Forward stepwise logistic regression (likelihood ratio) analysis was applied to identify predictive factors for a pCR of NAC. A nomogram was then developed according to the logistic model, and internally validated using the bootstrap resampling method. Results. pCR was achieved in 39 (48.8%) patients after NAC. Multivariate analysis identified four independent indicators: clinical tumor stage, lymphocyte to monocyte ratio, fibrinogen level, and D-dimer level. The nomogram established based on these factors showed its discriminatory ability, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.803 (95% confidence interval 0.706-0.899) and a bias-corrected AUC of 0.771. The calibration curve and Hosmer-Lemeshow test showed that the predictive ability of the nomogram was a good fit to actual observation. Conclusions. The nomogram proposed in the present study exhibited a sufficient discriminatory ability for predicting pCR of NAC in TNBC patients.