Clinical Characteristics of Thyroid Micropapillary Carcinoma / 대한이비인후과학회지

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Thyroid micropapillary carcinoma (equal or less than 10 mm at great dimension) is now reported with increasing incidence due to fine needle aspiration under high-resolution ultrasonography. The extent of thyroidectomy and lymph node dissection has been an issue of controversy. The purpose of this study was to analyze clinical characteristics of thyroid micropapillary carcinoma with total thyroidectomy and preventive central neck dissection. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: For suspicious thyroid micropapillary carcinoma, total thyroidectomy and preventive central neck dissection was performed in 63 patients (18 male, 45 female, mean ages of 59 years) between November 2004 and September 2008. They were suspected to have micropapillary carcinoma by fine needle aspiration and diagnosed with micropapillary carcinoma postoperatively. RESULTS: The mean tumor size was 6 mm. Twenty-one patients (33.3%) had multifocal diseases and 19 patients (30.2%) had extrathyroid extension. Lymph node metastases were found in 20 patients (31.7%) on central neck and 7 patients (11.1%) on lateral neck. There were no relations between multifocal disease or extrathyroid lesion and lymph node metastases (p> 0.05). There was no significance of variables according to tumor size of 5 mm (p> 0.05). There was a significant relation between central and lateral lymph node metastasis (p< 0.05). CONCLUSION: These data can be used for future studies for necessity or unnecessity of total thyroidectomy and/or preventive central neck dissection for thyroid micropapillary carcinoma. The possibility of coexistence of central and lateral neck metastasis should be considered.