Current treatment of papillary thyroid microcarcinoma.

PTMC is being diagnosed with increasing frequency and generally has an excellent prognosis with less than 0.5% disease-specific mortality. Better prognostic stratification, especially for high-risk patients, helps to optimize surgical care. Older age, extrathyroidal invasion, lymph node involvement, and distant metastases are usually regarded as the most potent risk factors for patients with PTMC. Total or near-total thyroidectomy is advocated as the initial therapy for most primary PTMCs, whereas neck dissection is only recommended with the presence of cervical lymphadenopathy or T4 tumors. ATA suggests that postoperative RAI ablations be administrated to patients with gross extrathyroidal invasion or distant metastases. RAI ablation may also facilitate the use of serum Tg concentrations for postoperative risk assessment.