Overall Survival Prediction for Colon Cancer Patients of 0-IV Stages With and Without Surgical Operation Through a Revised Taylor Series Expansion Algorithm: A Population-Based Study in Taiwan

摘要

This study was aimed to predict the overall survival of colon cancer patients at various (0-IV) stages and provided a robust assessment of the expediency of a surgical operation for such patients. The proposed prediction algorithm was based on the well-known hit and target model adopted for analyzing the cell death from the microscopic viewpoint and implied the application of the Taylor series expansion to the population-based survey dataset {in particular, to the population-based study of colon cancer patients in Taiwan covering the period from 2007 to 2016). In the proposed algorithm, the fundamental degradation of patient's health was represented by a specific function comprising a single exponential term exp(-at), which was multiplied by an additional term P(at) that specified the recovery effect of a particular therapy. The revised algorithm successfully predicted the colon cancer patients' overall survival at stages 0-IV and evaluated the expediency necessity of surgical operation for patients at various stages as well. For the above population-based survey dataset, the calculated lethal frequency and average residual life of colon cancer patients who undergone surgical operation amounted to {0.029, 0.036, 0.058, 0.077, 0.236) yr (-1) and {34.5, 27.8, 17.2, 13.0, 4.2) yr for stages 0-IV, respectively, while those for the respective groups of patients with no surgical operation was assessed as {0.116, 0.181, 0.256, 0.203, 0.504) yr(-1) and {8.6, 5.5, 3.9, 4.9, 2.0) yr, respectively. The proposed algorithm was also applied to interpret the overall survival of lung cancer patients at stages III and IV and exhibited a partial agreement with the actual collected data.