Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The aim of this work is the evaluation of usefulness of radioactive seed localization (RSL) for the detection of cervical recurrence of thyroid cancer in order to improve the surgical outcome.

Material and method: Six patients with thyroid cancer with cervical recurrences evidenced by ultrasound, cytology/Tg-FNAB were selected for this procedure. A ¹²⁵I seed was placed in the metastatic lesion using a needle guided by ultrasound. During surgery, a handheld gamma probe/portable gammacamera were used for lesion localization and excision. After removing the target issue, it was verified that the seed was included in the excised tissue. Surgical intervention duration, lesion location, seed activity, thyroglobulin level, effective radiation dose, complications and the degree of surgical resection were analyzed.

Results: All the marked nodes were positive in histology. The mean duration of the ultrasound procedure was 12.8 ± 5.2 min. Seed was kept inside the patient, in average, during 4.3 days (3–7) and the average surgical time was 45 ± 37.5 min. We found 13 metastatic specimens. The mean activity of the implanted seed was 70.32 ± 22.7 MBq (42.8–105). The thyroglobulin level was 2.08 ± 1.56 ng/dl. Only one case of transient hypoparathyroidism was found.

Conclusions: The introduction of RSL in our unit has shown benefits for the patient and medical team, being a safe and effective procedure that also improves surgical programming.