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. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 38 : E1256–E1263, 2016