Nomogram effectively predicts liver metastasis in colorectal cancer

A nomogram combining circulating tumor cells (CTC) from the first drainage vein and clinical parameters was developed to predict liver metastasis in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Analysis of data from 343 patients revealed that higher CTC levels correlated with liver metastasis. Key identified predictors included vascular invasion, T stage, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), and CA19-9. The model demonstrated strong discriminatory abilities, achieving AUC values of 0.871 and 0.891 for training and validation sets, respectively.