[Thyroidectomy for thyroid carcinoma. Our experience]

The surgical management of thyroid carcinoma involves different degrees of lymphadenctomy, according to features such as the nature, the site and the severity of the disease. The authors present their experience in order to contribute to the debate on the standard management of nodal metastasis in well-differentiated thyroid cancers. The authors describe their six years of experience in 302 thyroid cancer patients with a total of 291 thyroidectomies performed. According to the different pathological findings, the treatment involved a monolateral dissection in 42 patients and a bilateral modified neck dissection in 21. A number of anatomical considerations regarding the pathway of lymphatic drains are summarized and follow-up results are also presented. The slow progression of the disease and its low incidence make long-term prospective studies difficult, thus hindering any definitive assessment of lymph node management in well-differentiated thyroid cancers.