Postoperative nomogram for predicting disease-specific death and recurrence in papillary thyroid carcinoma

Background. A nomogram could provide individualized prognostic for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). The purpose of our study was to develop and validate a new nomogram. Methods. Consecutive patients with PTC from 2 different institutions were analyzed and divided into the development (n=849) and validation (n=275) sets. The former was used for formulating a nomogram in predicting disease-specific death and recurrence, whereas the latter was for validation (by area under the curve [AUC]). Results. The nomogram had excellent discrimination in predicting 10-year disease-specific death and recurrence (0.984; 0.969-0.998; and 0.743; 0.658-0.828; respectively). A score <30 meant 100% of the patients survived at 10 years and those who died within 10 years had a score >30. A score <17 meant almost all the patients (91.04%) were disease-free within 10 years. Conclusion. Using a competing-risk model, a nomogram was created with excellent discriminatory ability and accuracy in predicting 10-year disease-specific death and recurrence for PTC. Our results implied its potential for wider use in other populations. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.