The Value of Microvascular Imaging for Triaging Indeterminate Cervical Lymph Nodes in Patients with Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Cancers

Seongyong Lee¹  RaGyoung Yoon¹  JiYe Lee²  Ji-hoon Kim²  HyunSook Hong³ 

[1] Department of Radiology, Eulji Medical Center, Eulji University College of Medicine, Seoul 01830, Korea;Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea;Department of Radiology, Soonchunhyang University Bucheon Hospital, Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine, Bucheon 14584, Korea;

关键词: ultrasonography;    Doppler;    lymph node metastasis;    thyroid cancer;    biopsy;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cancers12102839

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Assessment of lymph node (LN) status in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is often troublesome because of cervical LNs with indeterminate US (ultrasound) features. We aimed to explore whether Superb Microvascular Imaging (SMI) could be helpful for distinguishing metastasis from indeterminate LNs when combined with power Doppler US (PDUS). From 353 consecutive patients with PTC, LNs characterized as indeterminate by PDUS were evaluated by SMI to distinguish them from metastasis. Indeterminate LNs were reclassified according to the SMI, the malignancy risk of each category was assessed, and the diagnostic performance of suspicious findings on SMI was calculated. The incidence of US-indeterminate LNs was 26.9%. Eighty PDUS-indeterminate LNs (39 proven as benign, 41 proven as malignant) were reclassified into probably benign (n = 26), indeterminate (n = 20), and suspicious (n = 34) categories according to SMI, with malignancy risks of 19.2%, 20.0%, and 94.1%, respectively. After combining SMI with PDUS, 80.8% (21/26) of probably benign LNs and 94.1% (32/34) of suspicious LNs could be correctly diagnosed as benign and metastatic, respectively. The diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of categorizing LNs as suspicious based on SMI were 78.1%, 94.9%, and 86.3%, respectively. In conclusion, the combination of SMI with PDUS was helpful for the accurate stratification of indeterminate LNs based on US in patients with PTC.

【 授权许可】

Unknown