Zheng H, et al. - In patients with early esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), researchers sought to create and validate a nomogram for predicting lymph node metastasis. For this study, 281 patients with clinicopathologically confirmed early SCC were included in the derivation cohort. The model included four variables related to lymph node metastasis: depth of tumor invasion, grade of differentiation, tumor size and lymphovascular invasion. For patients with early esophageal SCC, the validated nomogram seemed effective in predicting the risk of lymph node metastasis.