Abstract

BackgroundThe minimum number of lymph nodes (LNs) that should be resected for accurate nodal staging in patients with ampullary carcinoma (AC) remains controversial. This study aimed to establish a nodal staging score (NSS) to evaluate whether a pathological node-negative AC patient is indeed free of a nodal disease. MethodsA total of 2539 AC patients with stages I–III were retrieved from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Result database (design cohort [DC], n = 2382) and First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (validation cohort [VC], n = 157). NSS was developed to represent the probability that a node-negative patient was correctly staged as a function of the number of examined LNs (ELNs) and pathologic T stage with a beta-binomial model. Its prognostic value in node-negative patients was assessed by survival analysis. ResultsThe probability of missing a metastatic LN decreased as the number of the ELNs increased. NSS was escalated as the number of ELNs increased. For patients with early-stage (T1–T2) and late-stage (T3–T4) tumors, examining 7 and 33 lymph nodes could ensure an NSS of 80.0%, respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that higher NSS was an independent favorable prognostic factor for overall survival in node-negative patients with AC (DC, p < 0.001; VC, p = 0.001). ConclusionsNSS model could be used to evaluate the accuracy of nodal staging and predict the prognosis of node-negative AC patients. It could assist in making clinical strategies in node-negative AC patients.

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