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Research Article: A simple-to-use clinical nomogram to predict radiation esophagitis among esophageal cancer patients receiving radiotherapy: a retrospective cohort study

Date Published: 2026-08-06

Abstract:
Moderate-to-severe acute radiation esophagitis (MSARE) is a treatment-limiting toxicity of thoracic radiotherapy (RT) in esophageal cancer (EC). Early identification of high-risk patients is essential to individualize supportive care and preserve treatment continuity. To develop and internally validate a parsimonious clinical nomogram for predicting MSARE, interpret it with SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), and benchmark it against four machine learning (ML) algorithms. We retrospectively reviewed 151 EC patients who completed thoracic RT between January 2022 and December 2024. Candidate predictors were screened with LASSO regression and entered into a multivariable logistic model, visualized as a nomogram. Discrimination, calibration, clinical utility, and learning behavior were assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), calibration plots, decision curve analysis (DCA), and a learning curve. Logistic regression was benchmarked against XGBoost, LightGBM, AdaBoost, and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) under stratified 5-fold cross-validation. MSARE occurred in 81 of 151 patients (53.6%). Three independent predictors were retained: upper esophageal tumor (OR 7.32), hypertension (OR 2.35), and serum albumin (OR 0.85; all P < 0.05). The nomogram achieved a 5-fold cross-validated training AUC of 0.832 and validation AUC of 0.816 (95% CI: 0.676–0.949), with good calibration ( P = 0.423) and positive net benefit on DCA. SHAP ranked albumin as the most influential predictor. Logistic regression yielded the highest validation AUC; DeLong tests showed no significant differences among models. An interpretable three-variable nomogram demonstrates promising internal discrimination for MSARE, yields comparable performance to four ML algorithms, and supports individualized supportive-care planning by clinicians.

Introduction:
Moderate-to-severe acute radiation esophagitis (MSARE) is a treatment-limiting toxicity of thoracic radiotherapy (RT) in esophageal cancer (EC). Early identification of high-risk patients is essential to individualize supportive care and preserve treatment continuity.

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