2018 Volume 111 Issue 11 Pages 781-785
Introduction: Papillary thyroid carcinoma has a relatively good prognosis among malignant tumors of the thyroid. Therefore, a “wait and see” strategy is often adopted for patients micropapillary thyroid carcinoma. On the other hand, papillary thyroid carcinoma patients with N1b or M1 disease are known to show a poor prognosis. Here, we investigated the differences in the characteristics between papillary thyroid microcarcinoma patients with and without N1b metastatic nodes/distant metastases, in order to identify the risk factors for metastasis.
Method: The retrospective study was performed in patients with thyroid microcarcinoma who were treated at the Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital from 2007 to 2017. The characteristics of the patients with thyroid microcarcinoma who were classified as having N1b or M1 disease (high-risk group) were compared with those of patients with the same cancer classified as having N0, N1a, M0 disease (low-risk group).
Result: A total of 65 patients were enrolled in this study, and 12 were classified into the high-risk group, and 53 were classified into the low-risk group. The proportion of males was significantly higher in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group. There were no statistically significant differences in the distribution of the sites of the tumors, the ultrasonographic findings, or the frequency of the presence of multiple carcinomas. Although three patients died due to other causes, there were no patients who died due to the papillary thyroid carcinoma.
Conclusion: No significant predictors for classifying papillary thyroid microcarcinoma patients into the high-risk group were identified in this study. However, our findings suggested that male patients with papillary thyroid microcarcinoma require more careful follow-up as compared to female patients with this cancer.
