Prognostic significance of a five-factor modified frailty index in patients with gastric cancer undergoing curative-intent resection: A cohort study

The 5-factor modified frailty index (mFI-5) evaluates frailty based on variables including functional status, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, and hypertension requiring medication. Despite its effectiveness in predicting surgical risk, the potential of mFI-5 as a predictor of long-term survival in patients with gastric cancer (GC) has not been investigated. This study aims to assess the prognostic significance of mFI-5 in patients with GC who have undergone curative-intent gastric resection. Among the 494 patients diagnosed with stage I to III GC, multivariate analysis revealed that age, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, geriatric nutritional risk index, mFI-5, and the type of gastrectomy were significant predictors for both overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). We assessed 3 models: Baseline model (BM, TNM stage only), interim model (IM, all significant variables except mFI-5), and full model (FM, all significant variables including mFI-5). FM outperformed BM for OS (C-index 0.818 vs 0.683; P <.001) and DFS (C-index 0.805 vs 0.687; P <.001). Similarly, IM outperformed BM for OS (C-index 0.811 vs 0.683; P <.001) and DFS (C-index 0.797 vs 0.687; P <.001). Multiple metrics consistently supported the improved discriminative capacity of FM and IM compared to BM. However, while FM exhibits enhanced predictive capacity over IM, this improvement lacks statistical significance across key metrics. In conclusion, our study highlights the clinical significance of the mFI-5, along with age, TNM stage, geriatric nutritional risk index, and type of gastrectomy, as valuable predictors of long-term survival in GC patients. The FM consistently demonstrates enhanced predictive accuracy compared to the BM. However, it is important to note that while the FM improves predictive power over the IM, this enhancement does not achieve statistical significance across multiple metrics. These findings collectively emphasize the potential clinical value of the FM as a robust tool for surgeons in predicting long-term survival outcomes before surgery in patients with GC.