Comprehensive analysis of clinicopathologic and sonographic features in thyroid cancer with skip lymph node metastasis: establish and assessment of a prediction nomogram

•A few studies have focused on skip metastasis, and the clinical and pathological risk factors remain uncertain. Some researchers have also proposed different models for predicting its occurrence, but their models were only based on the clinicopathologic characteristics, and none of them included US features. In this study, we retrospectively examined the incidence and related clinicopathologic and US characteristics of skip metastasis in PTC and papillary thyroid microcarcinoma.•We established a nomogram for predicting the possibility of skip metastasis according to the clinicopathological and US features.•The number of patients in this study is 1037, this sample is relatively larger than other study. The results of our study might be less bias.