Potential Role for Carbon Nanoparticles to Guide Central Neck Dissection in Patients With Papillary Thyroid Cancer
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2016-01-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is the most common subtype of thyroid cancer.
The most common site of PTC nodal metastases is the central neck, which has a reported rate
of lymph node metastases as high as 50%~70%.
Central neck dissection has important value to ensure accurate clinical staging and surgical
planning.
As a novel lymphatic tracer, carbon nanoparticles (CN) have been applied successfully in the
detection of sentinel lymph nodes in breast and gastric cancers, while not been used as a
lymphatic tracer for PTC. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether the use of CN
facilitates the detection of lymph nodes, increases the number of metastatic lymph nodes
removed, accurately reflects the metastatic condition of the central neck, and has the
potential to protect the parathyroid glands.