Performing Central Neck Dissection in Patients with Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma with Clinically Node Negative, Benefits and Drawbacks: A Comparative Study

Context: central neck dissection in addition to total thyroidectomy as a management procedure of patients with papillary carcinoma of the thyroid [PTC] was previously found to decrease the incidence of lymph node recurrence and allow and accurate PTC surgical staging that allow making a better decision regarding adjuvant radioactive iodine (RAI) ablation. But recently, central neck dissection in patients with clinical and radiological evidences of negative cervical lymph nodes was found to have many post-operative complications. Aim: to assess benefits, complications and drawbacks of performing central neck dissection by in PTC patients. Patients and methods: This is a prospective randomized study which included 70 PTC patients who was subjected to total thyroidectomy with or without neck dissection; all included patients have clinically negative cervical lymph nodes, 40 (60%) underwent total thyroidectomy in addition to central neck dissection and 30 (40%) patients were subjected to only total thyroidectomy without central neck dissection. We followed our patients for five years to detect recurrence, RFS and OS rates. Results: We found that operative time was longer in patients underwent central block dissection (p=0.049). Recurrence free survival and overall survival rates were not significantly different among both included groups, which denoted that central block neck dissection has no survival benefits in PTC patients. Conclusions: We have concluded that performing central neck dissection in PTC with clinically and radiologically negative lymph nodes has no benefits in increasing patients’ survival or decreasing recurrence rate and might lead to prolongation of operation time, increasing post-operative morbidity.