Clinicopathologic characteristics and predictive nomogram of skip lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer

This study identified key risk factors for skip lymph node metastasis and developed the first clinically applicable predictive model. The resulting nomogram demonstrated high accuracy in risk stratification, providing a visual tool to optimize lymph node dissection strategies. These findings support incorporating metastatic location into gastric cancer staging systems and the location of LN metastasis should be considered to improve the LN staging.