ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Gastric and Esophageal Cancers
Construction and validation of a risk prediction model for oral frailty in elderly patients with esophageal cancer
Provisionally accepted
- 1The First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China
- 2Qingdao Hiser Hospital, Qingdao, China
- 3Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
- 4Nanchang University Queen Mary School, Nanchang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background To explore the current status of oral frailty in elderly patients with esophageal cancer (EC), construct and verify the risk prediction model of oral frailty in elderly patients with EC, so as to provide a reference for early identification and intervention of oral frailty in this population. Methods In this study, 390 elderly patients with EC treated in the First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University from January, 2023 to June, 2024 were selected as the training group, and 165 elderly patients with EC treated in Qingdao Hiser Hospital Affiliated of Qingdao University from July, 2024 to July, 2025 were selected as the validation group. A cross-sectional study was used for data collection. Three types of assessment tools were used, including the self-made general information questionnaire, outcome variable assessment scale and candidate variable assessment scale. The patients were divided into two groups according to the occurrence of oral frailty. LASSO regression and multivariate analysis were performed using SPSS 27.0 and R 4.4.3 software to identify the independent risk factors for oral frailty. The Bootstrap method with 1000 repeated samplings was used for internal validation of the model, while external validation was conducted using data from the validation group. Results The incidence of oral frailty in the training group and validation group was 45.90% and 43.03%, respectively. The results showed that radiotherapy history, tumor staging, physical frailty, smoking history, age, and nutritional status were independent risk factors for oral frailty in elderly patients with EC (P <0.05). Conclusion The risk of oral frailty in elderly patients with EC is high, which is related to radiotherapy history, tumor staging, physical frailty, smoking history, age, nutritional status and other factors. The oral frailty risk prediction model for elderly patients with EC constructed in this study has good predictive efficacy in internal and external validation, which can provide a reference for medical staff to identify high-risk groups early and take targeted intervention measures.
Keywords: elderly patients, esophageal cancer, nomogram, Oral frailty, Risk prediction model
Received: 30 Oct 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lv, Li, Wang, Liu, Du, Wang, Wang and Shi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hui Wang
Yao Shi
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.