Preoperative predicting score of lymph node metastasis for gastric cancer

The aim of our study was to develop a new score system that might predict the probability of lymph node of gastric carcinoma. We studied the clinicopathological variables of 932 patients with gastric carcinoma admitted to the Department of Surgical Oncology at the First Hospital of China Medical University. Logistic analysis was performed to identify predictors. The hazard risk (HR) of variables obtained from logistic regression was used to construct a simple scoring system determined by an aggregate of the points assigned for each selected variable. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was created to analyze the specificity. Lymph node metastases were found in 644 (69.1 %) of 932 patients. After multivariate logistic regression analysis, tumor size, depth of invasion, and macroscopic types (P < 0.001) were selected as viable predictors to establish the scoring system. ROC curves were plotted to verify the accuracy of predicting score and other variables for both Lymph node stage (N stage) prediction. It showed that the predicting score system had a better specificity and sensitivity (65.71 % and 83.54 %, respectively). The current study suggests that a preoperative prediction system to identify the risk of lymph node metastasis is feasible. This model may be useful in preoperative counseling about the cost and benefit of systemic lymph node dissection.