Nomogram for predicting central node metastasis in papillary thyroid carcinoma

Background There was a difficulty for detecting Central lymph node metastasis (CLNM) in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to design a nomogram for predicting CLNM. Methods A total of 10,763 PTC patients who underwent total thyroidectomy with central neck dissection (CND) in Samsung Medical Center were randomly assigned to the training set (n = 7,535) and to the internal validation set (n = 3,228). And, a total of 2,514 PTC patients who underwent total thyroidectomy with CND at Seoul National University Hospital were assigned to the external validation set. Results The values of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in the training set, internal validation set, and external validation set were 0.721 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.709–0.732), 0.706 (95%CI, 0.688–0.724), and 0.706 (95%CI, 0.685–0.727), respectively. Conclusions We recommend the use of our nomogram to enable clinicians and patients to easily personalize and quantify the probability of CLNM during the both pre- and postoperative period. Clinicians may consider the prophylactic CND and meticulous postoperative evaluation in PTC patients with a high nomogram score. J. Surg. Oncol. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.