Evidence map›Paper›PMID 21509150›Full record

ArticleJournal of Cancer2011

Medullary Thyroid Cancer: It is a pain in the neck?

Marlon A Guerrero, Sheila Lindsay, Insoo Suh, Menno R Vriens, Elham Khanafshar, Wen T Shen, Jessica Gosnell, Electron Kebebew, Quan-Yang Duh, Orlo H Clark

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of Cancer, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
0.4field-weighted citation impact, top 34% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

10 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.

Marlon A Guerrero1. Department of Surgery, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA;
Sheila Lindsay
Insoo Suh
Menno R Vriens
Elham Khanafshar
Wen T Shen
Jessica Gosnell
Electron Kebebew
Quan-Yang Duh
Orlo H Clark
University of California, San Francisco · USNational Cancer Institute · USUniversity of Arizona · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundMedullary thyroid cancer (MTC) commonly presents with lymph node (LN) metastases, and has a worse prognosis than papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). Tumor size and LN involvement have been shown to affect stage of disease; however, to our knowledge, ours is the first study that attempts to correlate anterior neck pain on presentation with the extent of disease.

methodsWe performed a retrospective review of patients with MTC who underwent an operation from February 1998 through December 2008. We compared the symptom of anterior neck pain with the pathologic extent of disease. Our control group comprised patients who underwent an operation for PTC. Analysis was performed using the Fisher's exact test and the Mann-Whitney test.

resultsOf the 109 patients with MTC, 50 (46%) met our inclusion criteria. Of the 50 patients with MTC, 11 presented with neck pain, compared to 3 of the 50 patients with PTC (p = 0.041). Of those 11 patients, 9 (82%) had LN involvement on final pathology, as compared with 14 (36%) of the 39 without neck pain (p = 0.014). Of patients with neck pain, 18% were diagnosed at stage I to II and 82% at stage III to IV, compared to 64% at stage I to II and 36% at stage III to IV (p = 0.014).

conclusionsOur study demonstrates that more patients with MTC present with anterior neck pain than do patients with PTC and that patients with MTC and neck pain have an increased risk of LN metastases. The results of this study suggest that MTC patients, who present with concomitant neck pain, should undergo a total thyroidectomy, prophylactic bilateral central neck dissection, and ipsilateral lateral neck dissection.

Indexed as

lymph nodeMedullary thyroid cancerpapillary thyroid cancer

Identifiers

PMID21509150
PMCPMC3079917
OpenAlexW2155708903

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.