Prognostic models for radiation-induced complications after radiotherapy in head and neck cancer patients

Amongst 592 developed models, a limited number had adequate quality. Only one-fifth were externally validated, of which, only nine models at least twice. These nine models showed acceptable discriminative performance at external validation. However, their calibration performance was not always reported. Furthermore, most validation studies were judged as having high ROB, mainly due to problems in the analysis domain. In conclusion, this review shows the need for more external validation studies before the implementation of developed models in clinical practice and improvement of the quality of conducting and reporting of prediction model studies.