ArticleFrontiers in oncology2022
A Mathematical Model to Assess the Effect of Residual Positive Lymph Nodes on the Survival of Patients With Papillary Thyroid Microcarcinoma.
Article in Frontiers in oncology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled 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.
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.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- 2025 American Thyroid Association Management Guidelines for Adult Patients with Differentiated Thyroid Cancer.Thyroid : official journal of the American Thyroid Association · 2025Guideline
- Comprehensive analysis of learning curve and surgical outcomes of endoscopic thyroidectomy for papillary thyroid carcinoma: a prospective study.Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2026Article
- Incorporation size of lymph node metastasis focus and pre-ablation stimulated Tg could more effectively predict clinical outcomes in differentiated thyroid cancer patients without distant metastases.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Active surveillance (AS) has been considered the first-line management for patients with clinical low-risk papillary thyroid microcarcinoma (PTMC) who often have lymph node micrometastasis (m-LNM) when diagnosed. The "low-risk" and "high prevalence of m-LNM" paradox is a potential barrier to the acceptance of AS for thyroid cancer by both surgeons and patients. Methods: Patients diagnosed with PTMC who underwent thyroidectomy with at least one lymph node (LN) examined were identified from a tertiary center database (n = 5,399). A β-binomial distribution was used to estimate the probability of missing nodal disease as a function of the number of LNs examined. Overall survival (OS) probabilities of groups with adequate and inadequate numbers of LNs examined were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database (n = 15,340). A multivariable model with restricted cubic splines was also used to verify the association of OS with the number of LNs examined. Results: The risk of residual m-LNM (missed nodal disease) ranged from 31.3% to 10.0% if the number of LNs examined ranged from 1 and 7 in patients with PTMC. With 7 LNs examined serving as the cutoff value, the intergroup comparison showed that residual positive LNs did not affect OS across all patients and patients aged ≥55 years (P = 0.72 and P = 0.112, respectively). After adjusting for patient and clinical characteristics, the multivariate model also showed a slight effect of the number of LNs examined on OS (P = 0.69). Conclusions: Even with the high prevalence, OS is not significantly compromised by persistent m-LNM in the body of patients with low-risk PTMC. These findings suggest that the concerns of LNM should not be viewed as an obstacle to developing AS for thyroid cancer. For patients with PTMC who undergo surgery, prophylactic central LN dissection does not provide a survival benefit.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.