Analysis of the Clinicopathologic Characteristics of Multifocal Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma / 대한내분비외과학회지

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common malignancy that develops from the thyroid gland and its prognosis is quite excellent. One of the characteristic behaviors of PTC is that it often occurs at multiple foci. The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinicopathologic features and risk factors of multifocal papillary thyroid cancer. METHODS: A retrospective review was carried out on 624 patients with PTC and who underwent surgery from January 2005 to December 2007. Two hundred twenty-nine of them were found to have multiple tumor foci (≥2 foci). The risk factors that included gender, age at diagnosis, tumor size, capsular invasion, extrathyroidal extension (ETE), cervical lymph node (LN) involvement, the TNM classification, local recurrence and distant metastasis were comparatively analyzed between the solitary PTC and multifocal PTC groups. RESULTS: The enrolled patients were 59 male and 565 females. The mean age was 46 years (range 15~77 years). Age (P=0.025), tumor size (P=0.027), capsular invasion (P<0.001), ETE (P<0.001) and cervical LN metastasis (P=0.002) were the significantly related factors for multifocal papillary thyroid cancer. However, gender was not significantly related with multifocality. CONCLUSION: The results of this study showed that multifocal tumors were significantly associated with age, tumors size, capsular invasion, ETE and cervical LN metastasis in patients with PTC. LN metastasis was mostly influenced by multifocality in the PTC patients. It seems certain that total thyroidectomy and formal central node dissection with postoperative adjuvant therapy are essential treatment for these patients, and closely surveying the nodal status is needed on the follow up of patients with multifocal PTC.