Establishment and evaluation of a risk-scoring system for lymph node metastasis in early-stage endometrial carcinoma: Achieving preoperative risk stratification.

AIM To establish a risk-scoring system for lymph node metastasis (LNM) of early-stage endometrial carcinoma (EC), and to stratify the preoperative risk of LNM. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 507 patients diagnosed with the early-stage EC (i.e., confined to the uterine corpus). We determined the risk factors for LNM by logistic regression analysis; then constructed a simple logistic scoring system, and an additive scoring system based on the regression coefficient (β), and odds ratio, of each variable, respectively. RESULTS The overall rate of LNM was 9.1% (46/507). Multivariate analysis showed that preoperative serum cancer antigen 125 (CA125) ≥35 U/mL, histopathology of grade 3 and/or type II, depth of myometrial invasion ≥1/2 and positive immunostaining for Ki-67 ≥50%, were independent risk factors for LNM (P  0.8). Based on the additive scoring system, the risk of LNM in patients with early-stage EC was classified into three groups: a low-risk group (total score: 10). The incidence of LNM differed significantly across these three groups (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION The risk-scoring system constructed in this study can effectively predict the risk of LNM in patients with early-stage EC, achieve preoperative risk stratification and provide a reference guideline for the use of lymphadenectomy.