Improving the Prognostic Ability through Better Use of Standard Clinical Data - The Nottingham Prognostic Index as an Example.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Prognostic factors and prognostic models play a key role in medical research and patient management. The Nottingham Prognostic Index (NPI) is a well-established prognostic classification scheme for patients with breast cancer. In a very simple way, it combines the information from tumor size, lymph node stage and tumor grade. For the resulting index cutpoints are proposed to classify it into three to six groups with different prognosis. As not all prognostic information from the three and other standard factors is used, we will consider improvement of the prognostic ability using suitable analysis approaches.

Methods and findings

Reanalyzing overall survival data of 1560 patients from a clinical database by using multivariable fractional polynomials and further mo

SUBMITTER: Winzer KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4777365 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature