Objective: To approach reasonable operational mode of differentiated thyroid cancer.
Methods: Retrospectively review 546 differentiated thyroid cancer patients who received bilateral thyroidectomy with or without cervical lymph node excision from January 2001 to December 2006.
Results: No death case happened during operation and hospitalization. The positive percentage of cervical lymph node metastasis was 76.2% (358/470). The incidence rate of single lateral recurrent laryngeal nerve injury was 1.1% (6 cases), parathyroid gland partly injury was 0.4% (2 cases), superior laryngeal nerve injury was 0.7% (4 cases), bleeding was 0.6% (3 cases) and esophagus injury after operation was 0.2% (1 case). There were no bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve injury found.
Conclusions: Total thyroidectomy is an essential operational mode for differentiated thyroid cancer. It is necessary to excise cervical lymph node when the tumor's diameter exceeds 1 cm.