To validate the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) prognostic nomogram in a single-institution cohort of patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), and to compare its predictive accuracy against other established risk classification systems, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), and Joensuu criteria.

We retrospectively reviewed 289 patients who underwent surgical resection for primary localized GISTs without adjuvant imatinib therapy and compared the actuarial recurrence-free survival (RFS) with the predicted RFS.

Tumors >5 cm in size, with high mitotic index, and which had ruptured were significantly associated with recurrent disease. The 2-year RFS was 77.2 % [95 % confidence interval (CI) 71.6-81.8], and the 5-year RFS was 67.9 % (95 % CI 61.7-73.4). The concordance probability of the nomogram of 2-year RFS was 0.71 (SE 0.02), and 5-year RFS was 0.71 (SE 0.19). The 2-year and 5-year MSKCC nomogram probability calculations and the AFIP criteria gave a better estimation of RFS compared to the NIH (p < 0.001) and Joensuu (p < 0.001) criteria. There was no significant difference between the predictive accuracy of the nomogram compared to the AFIP criteria.

The MSKCC nomogram slightly underestimated the probability of RFS after surgical resection of GISTs. It was associated with a significantly better predictive accuracy compared to the NIH and Joensuu. This study suggests that there is a wider than expected prognostic divergence between gastric GISTs versus GISTs arising from the small intestine.