The clinicopathological significance of histologic vascular invasion in differentiated thyroid carcinoma

Clinicopathological correlation and clinical importance of histologic vascular invasion in differentiated thyroid carcinoma have not been fully examined.

Histologic vascular invasion of 256 differentiated thyroid carcinomas was examined using Victoria-blue hematoxylin-eosin staining.

Vascular invasion was found in 120 patients and was independently related to lymph node metastasis (P <0.0001), extrathyroidal invasion (P = 0.0003) and differentiation (P = 0.0183). Patients with vascular invasion more frequently relapsed than those without (P = 0.0069). The disease-free survival of patients with vascular invasion (15.6 +/- 1.8 years) was shorter than that of patients without vascular invasion (20.5 +/- 0.9 years, P = 0.0001). In multivariate analysis, vascular invasion is an independent prognostic factor for disease-free survival, but not for overall survival.

These data suggest that histologic vascular invasion is associated with clinicopathologically aggressive thyroid carcinomas with lymphatic and hematogenous spread and is a prognostic factor for disease-free survival.