Radioguided neck dissection in recurrent metastatic papillary thyroid carcinoma

Although radioguided surgery has been used for the excision of sentinel nodes in breast cancer and melanoma, sparse literature exists describing its use in thyroid cancer. We report a 69-year-old patient with a previous total thyroidectomy and lymph node dissection for papillary carcinoma who was subsequently found to have recurrent metastatic disease. After a therapeutic dose of radioactive iodine, a hand-held gamma-probe was used to selectively dissect the neck. The patient was offered radioguided revision neck dissection to remove the disease using residual radioactivity of the original therapeutic iodine 131 dose. Our case report seeks to demonstrate a recent example of our use of the gamma-probe in radioguided surgical excision of recurrent metastatic papillary thyroid carcinoma.