Predicting lymph node metastasis in early gastric cancer patients: development and validation of a model.

Aim: To develop and validate a model to predict possibility of lymph node metastasis (LNM) in early gastric cancer. Materials & methods: An LNM prediction model was developed by logistic regression based on the demographics or characteristics of the tumor (N = 746) and then internally and externally validated (N = 126). Results: Four variables, lymphovascular invasion, differentiated types, diameter of tumor and T stage were screened into the model. The area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of the model was 0.861 (95% CI: 0.851-0.864) in internal validation and 0.911 (95% CI: 0.848-0.974) in the validation set. Conclusion: The model shows excellent discrimination and calibration performance, and is potential to be a useful clinical model to predict the risk of LNM in early gastric cancer.