Clinical research of the lymph node dissection posterior to the right recurrent laryngeal nerve in papillary thyroid carcinoma / 中国耳鼻咽喉头颈外科

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE To investigate the clinical value of the lymph nodes posterior to the right recurrent laryngeal nerve (LN-prRLN, right VI-2) dissection in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). METHODS We studied the relationships between LN-prRLN metastasis and the clinicopathological characteristics in 408 patients with right or bilateral PTC who underwent LN-prRLN dissection. RESULTS Right VI-2 lymph node metastasis was 16.67％. Single factor analysis showed that there were statistically significant correlations between right VI-2 metastasis and gender, age, size and number of right thyroid lobe tumor, capsular invasion, right VI-1 lymph node metastasis and their size, and also metastatic lymph node in the right cervical lateral compartment. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that Right VI-2 lymph node metastasis was related to right tumor size, capsular invasion, the right VI-1 metastasis and right lateral lymph node metastasis(P＜0.05). The receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the risk factors of LN-prRLN age ＜35.5 years, right tumor size ＞0.85 cm, lymph node (right VI-1) number ＞1.5, metastatic lymph node (right VI-1) size ＞0.45 cm, lymph node number in the right cervical lateral compartment ＞0.5 and the areas under the ROC curves were 0.585, 0.787, 0.788, 0.725, 0.719. CONCLUSION The dissection of LN-prRLN should be considered when patient with the risk factors such as male, age ＜35.5 years, right tumor size ＞0.85 cm, capsular invasion, lymph node (right VI-1) number ＞1.5, metastatic lymph node (right VI-1) size ＞0.45 cm, lymph node number in the right cervical lateral compartment ＞0.5.