Ultrasound-guided thermal ablation safer, as effective as surgery for papillary thyroid cancer
A new meta-analysis validates ultrasound-guided thermal ablation as a safer and equally effective alternative to surgery for the treatment of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC).
Published in Academic Radiology, the analysis details the outcomes of patients who opted for ablation instead of surgery, which remains the standard of care for PTC. Based on their assessment of the studies’ results, researchers lent their support to thermal ablation, as ablative techniques offer fewer side effects and quicker recoveries without increasing the risk of recurrence.
“Accumulating evidence suggests that thermal ablation techniques, including radio frequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation (MWA), and laser ablation (LA), are effective and safe treatment modalities for benign thyroid nodules and recurrent thyroid cancers,” Chaoyi Qi, with the Taian Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and colleagues noted. “In addition, thermal ablation techniques can avoid the complications of general anesthesia, achieve a lower trauma rate and speed recovery.”
The team’s analysis incorporated data from 6 studies that included more than 2,200 patients with an average follow-up duration of 5 years. Volume reduction rate (VRR), complete disappearance rate and recurrence rate were used to evaluate treatment effectiveness.
Over an average follow-up duration of 66 months, the ablative techniques yielded impressive results. The rate of local tumor recurrence was very low, at 2%, while rates of lymph node metastases and emergence of new cancers after treatment were both 0%. Approximately 6% of patients experienced complications, though every patient had fully recovered from them within 6 months. Encouragingly, none of the reported complications were life threatening, and there were no thyroid or parathyroid injuries reported in any of the studies.
“Thermal ablation allows the procedure to be performed for high-risk patients without any severe complications,” the authors noted, adding that many experts feel thermal ablation could become “a primary choice for PTC treatment.”
However, more prospective studies with long-term follow-up data are needed before ablative strategies become the go-to treatment for PTC, the team advised.
Learn more about the findings here.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.