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. (C) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.