Investigating the prevalence of risk factors of papillary thyroid carcinoma recurrence and disease-free survival after thyroidectomy and central neck dissection in Iranian patients

Abstract

Background: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is considered the most frequent thyroid malignancy (85-90%) with a good prognosis. However, its frequent recurrence increases mortality and morbidity. In this inquiry we investigated the prevalence of risk factors of PTC recurrence and disease free survival after thyroidectomy and central neck dissection.

Method: In this retrospective study, all patients with confirmed PTC who underwent total thyroidectomy and central neck dissection in Imam Reza and Omid hospitals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences from 2004 to 2011 were included. Total locoregional and distant recurrence rate, 5-year disease free survival rate (DFS) and contributing factors of recurrence were investigated after at least 5 years.

Results: In this study 289 patients were included with a mean follow-up of 72.90 ± 11.02 months. 70.6% were female and 29.4% were male. Recurrence occurred in 58 cases from which 10 were distant and 48 were loco-regional. 5-year DFS was 80% and total-survival-rate was 99%. Our analysis showed that primary tumor size, vascular-invasion, extra-thyroid extension, and lymph node ratio (LNR) were significantly related to DFS.

Keywords:

• Papillary thyroid carcinoma
• central neck lymph nodes
• recurrence
• disease-free survival
• lymph node ratio
• Iran

Acknowledgements

The results described in this paper constituted as a part of an MD thesis (thesis code 930722) submitted by the first author to the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded and supported by the vice chancellor for research of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences.