OBJECTIVE: To compare the ability of clinicians vs a nomogram at predicting future bone scan positivity in patients with prostate cancer.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This investigation was conducted during an advisory board meeting in June 2011. Details of 25 androgen deprivation therapy-naive prostate cancer patients were given to 24 prostate cancer experts, including urologists and oncologists. The clinicians were asked to predict the probability that the patients would have a positive bone scan if left untreated for 1 year. These predictions and those of the Slovin nomogram were compared with the actual occurrence of metastatic disease, and the discrimination ability was quantified using the concordance index (C index).
RESULTS: A higher C index value was obtained with the Slovin nomogram (0.812) than with the clinicians (0.628). The nomogram outperformed all of the clinicians; individual clinician C index values varied between 0.47 and 0.75. The urologists provided superior predictions compared with the oncologists.
CONCLUSION: Future bone scan positivity can be predicted more accurately using a nomogram than by expert clinicians. Nomograms should, therefore, become an integral part of the clinical decision-making process in the prostate cancer setting for patients with a rising prostate-specific antigen level after radical prostatectomy.
Written by:
Kattan MW, Yu C, Stephenson AJ, Sartor O, Tombal B. Are you the author?
Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio.
Reference: Urology. 2013 Jan 30. pii: S0090-4295(12)01497-5.
doi: 10.1016/j.urology.2012.12.010
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 23375915
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