Patients with PTC are usually young, and cervical metastases are not uncommon.20 The mean age of our patients was 30±2.3 years, which is comparable to other studies.21,22 The female to male ratio was also similar to previous studies as 3.2:1.23
In accordance with previous studies, CND revealed metastasis in 43% of patients experienced neck dissection.24 Also, other studies recorded this occult metastasis to be between 40 and 90%.25 So many surgeons consider the necessity of CND for PTC patients because the high rate of CN metastasis. …show more content…
However, in a study of patients 2 cm) were significantly associated with CN metastasis.27 Ito et al. reported that PTC of >2 cm was the strongest independent risk factor for both microscopic central and lateral LN metastasis.34 The presence of LN metastasis has been recorded to be 2-6 fold higher in patients with tumors of >4 cm in comparison with smaller tumors.35 In our study, CN metastasis was more frequent in patients with tumor size >2 cm and detected in 77% of patients, in comparison to patients with tumor size ≤2cm CN metastasis was detected in 53% of patients (P=0.007). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that tumor size >2 cm was an independent predictor of CN metastasis in patients with N0