Predicting cervical lymph node metastasis in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) - Why contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) was performed before thyroidectomy.

The objective of this research was to investigate the clinical value of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) for prediction of cervical lymph node metastasis (CLNM) in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC).One hundred and eighty-six patients with PTC confirmed by fine needle aspiration (FNA) were preoperatively performed CEUS.A multivariate analysis was performed to predict CLNM by 15 independent variables. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to evaluate the diagnostic performance.There were totally 37 patients with CLNM confirmed by pathology. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that intensity at peak time, capsule contact and size on CEUS were the three strongest independent predictors for CLNM. ROC analyses of these characteristics showed the areas under the curve (Az), sensitivity, and specificity were 0.650, 48.6 %, 79.8 %; 0.586, 67.6%, 49.7%; and 0.612, 56.8%, 64.4% for intensity at peak time, capsule contact, and size, respectively.The CEUS patterns of PTC are relative to not only the size of PTC but also the possibility of CLNM after thyroidectomy. CEUS seem to be a tool to predict CLNM in PTC patients.