Background: Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy and differentiated thyroid cancer has a 10-year survival rate of 90%. Cervical lymph node metastases are a common feature of papillary thyroid cancer while follicular thyroid cancer often spreads hematogenously.
Objective: To evaluate the role of central neck dissection in the management of differentiated thyroid cancer as regard its impact on both morbidity and overall outcome.
Patients and Methods: This was a prospective cross sectional study conducted on 30 patients diagnosed as differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) and admitted at the Surgical Oncology Department of Al-Azhar University Hospitals and Damanhour Oncology Centre. All patients of the study subjected to clinical assessment by complete history taking, complete laboratory investigations, imaging studies and tissue diagnosis by fine needle aspiration cytology.
Results: the relation between positive LNs and tumor of 2-4 cm size which was central group which commonly diagnosed clinically and the absence commonly diagnosed radio logically and also associated with capsular invasion of thyroid. The most common type of the tumor was papillary type with a little percentage of follicular type and I131 was used as appellatives therapy for some of these cases.
Conclusion: central neck dissection is still beneficial especially in high risk group of cases where there was capsular invasion.