Construction and validation of a nomogram for predicting cervical lymph node metastasis in tall cell variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Objective: To analyze the risk factors associated with the occurrence of cervical lymph node metastasis (LNM) in patients with tall cell variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma (TCV-PTC) and to establish a nomogram.

Methods: Clinical data of 727 patients with TCV-PTC from SEER database were obtained, and they were randomly divided into the training group (n = 508) and validation group (n = 219). The clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed by logistic regression, including age, marital status, race, gender, tumor size(cm), T stage, M stage, bilaterality, capsular invasion, extrathyroidal extension (ETE), vascular invasion and multifocality.