CEACAM5 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: However, in the validation set, the HB-CEA score was significantly correlated with sex (p=0.037), age (p<0.001), differentiation (p<0.001), diameter of lesion (p<0.001), pathological TNM stage (pTNM) (p<0.001), depth of invasion (p<0.001), lymph node metastasis (p<0.001), and survival status (p<0.001) (Table 3).