Nomogram built based on machine learning to predict recurrence in early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma patients treated with ablation.

Introduction: To analyze the risk factors affecting recurrence in early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients treated with ablation and then establish a nomogram to provide a clear and accessible representation of the patients' recurrence risk.

Methods: Collect demographic and clinical data of 898 early-stage HCC patients who underwent ablation treatment at Beijing You'an Hospital, affiliated with Capital Medical University from January 2014 to December 2022. Patients admitted from 2014 to 2018 were included in the training cohort, while 2019 to 2022 were in the validation cohort. Lasso and Cox regression was used to screen independent risk factors for HCC patients recurrence, and a nomogram was then constructed based on the screened factors.

Results: Age, gender, Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage, tumor size, globulin (Glob) and γ-glutamyl transpeptidase (γ-GT) were finally incorporated in the nomogram for predicting the recurrence-free survival (RFS) of patients. We further confirmed that the nomogram has optimal discrimination, consistency and clinical utility by the C-index, Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC), calibration curve and Decision Curve Analysis (DCA). Moreover, we divided the patients into different risk groups and found that the nomogram can effectively identify the high recurrence risk patients by the Kaplan-Meier curves.

Conclusion: This study developed a nomogram using Lasso-Cox regression to predict RFS in early-stage HCC patients following ablation, aiding clinicians in identifying high-risk groups for personalized follow-up treatments.