Construction and validation of a nomogram for predicting lateral lymph node metastasis in pediatric and adolescent with differentiated thyroid carcinoma

Abstract Background Limited research has been conducted to specifically investigate the identification of risk factors and the development of prediction models for lateral lymph node metastasis (LNM) in pediatric and adolescent differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) populations, despite its significant association with unfavorable prognosis. Methods This study entails a retrospective analysis of the clinical characteristics exhibited by pediatric and adolescent patients who have been diagnosed with DTC. The data utilized for this analysis was sourced from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database, spanning the time frame from 2000 to 2020. Furthermore, the study incorporates patients who were treated at the Departments of Breast and Thyroid Surgery in the Second Clinical Medical College, Affiliated Fifth People’s Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well as The General Hospital of Western Theater Command, during the period from 2010 to 2020. Results A cohort of 2631 patients from the SEER database, along with an additional 339 patients from our departments who met the specified inclusion criteria, were included in this study. Subsequently, four clinical variables, namely age, tumor size, multifocality, and extrathyroidal invasion, were identified as being significantly associated with lateral LNM in pediatric and adolescent DTC patients. These variables were then utilized to construct a nomogram, which demonstrated effective discrimination with a concordance index (C-index) of 0.731. Furthermore, the performance of this model was validated through both internal and external assessments, yielding C-index values of 0.721 and 0.712, respectively. Afterward, a decision curve analysis was conducted to assess the viability of this nomogram in predicting lymph node metastasis. Conclusion The current investigation has effectively constructed a nomogram model utilizing visualized multipopulationsal data. Our findings demonstrate a significant association between various clinical characteristics and lateral LNM in pediatric and adolescent DTC patients. These outcomes hold substantial significance for healthcare practitioners, as they can employ this model to inform individualized clinical judgments for the pediatric and adolescent cohorts.