CEACAM5 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: However, in the validation set, high CEA significantly correlated with sex (p=0.004), age (p<0.001), diameter of lesion (p=0.025), pathological TNM stage (pTNM) (p=0.003), depth of invasion (p=0.006), lymph node metastasis (p=0.002), and survival status (p<0.001) but not with the tumor location, differentiation, cancer embolism, and nerve invasion (all p>0.05).