ABSTRACT
Objective To study the sonographic features of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) associated with cervical lymph nodes metastasis for early diagnosis and prediction of the invaded cervical lymph nodes. Methods The sonographic features of 170 patients with pathologically confirmed PTC in First Afifliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University between 2011 and 2013 were retrospectively reviewed. There were 59 cases with neck lymph nodes metastases and 111 cases without neck lymph nodes metastases. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was aaplied to analyze the cut-off values of resistance index (RI) and peak systolic velocity (PSV) for judging the presence or absence of cercical lymph node metastasis. The Chi-square test and rank sum test were used to compare the different sonographic features between each group. The Logistic regression analysis was used to obtain the relevant factors of PTCs with cervical lymph node metastasis. Results ROC curve analysis showed that the cut-off values of RI and PSV were 0.735,13.95 cm/s. The primary tumor diameter, the existence of halo, the involvement of thyroid upper pole, the microcalciifcation, the blood suply classiifcation and the RI, PSV were statistically signiifcantly different between PTCs with and without cervical lymph node metastasis, whereas no statistical signiifcance was detected between the primary tumor echo pattern, boundary and the longitudinal/transveral ratio between the metastatic and nonmetastatic group. Logistic regression analysis showed that the PTC primary tumor diameter and PSV were independent factors coorelated with cervical lymph node metastasis. Conclusion Some sonographic features of PTC are closely correlated with lymph nodes metastasis, which are valuable in predicting the cervical lymph nodes metastasis in patients with PTC pre-operatively.