Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 13, 2025
Transoral Robotic Total Thyroidectomy and Bilateral Central Regional Lymph Node Dissection for Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma
Published on: September 15, 2023
Work-in-progress report: a prospective, multi-institutional observational study on intraoperative lymph node
Masatsugu Hamaji1,2, Shigeto Nishikawa2, Sho Koyasu3
1Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Nara Medical University, Kashihara, Japan.
Background:
Although lymph node metastasis may be an adverse prognostic factor for survival after resection of thymic epithelial malignancies, recommendations for intraoperative lymph node dissection (LND) lack consistency across various guidelines. This study aimed to investigate feasibility and characteristics of LND.
Methods:
This is a work-in-progress report of our prospective, multi-institutional observational study to evaluate the feasibility and characteristics of LND in patients with resectable thymic epithelial malignancies that exhibit radiological invasive features such as size >5 cm, standardized uptake value >5, or suspected invasion of surrounding organs.
Results:
In total, 25 patients were enrolled in this study. All patients underwent complete resection of the primary lesion with N1-level or N2-level LND. Among these, 22 (88%) patients underwent N1-level LND, and 20 (80%) patients underwent N2-level LND. No significant differences between the open and minimally invasive approaches were observed in the number of dissected stations (P=0.71), N1-level LND (P=0.49), or N2-level LND (P=0.69).
Conclusions:
Intraoperative LND may be feasible in both approaches and may contribute to accurate nodal staging in resectable thymic malignancies with radiologically invasive features.
