The Coming of Age of Ultrasound-Guided Percutaneous Ethanol Ablation of Selected Neck Nodal Metastases in Well-Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma

摘要

Clearly, there may always bea role for PUEA in palliation, when selected patients with advanced WDTC, rather than being appropriately concerned with potentially life-threat- ening distant metastases, become obsessed with the more easily visualized (and treated) NNM. However, it should be that much greater population of patients with localized node- positive PTC, who have not experienced an optimized sur- gical approach (19) and have proved resistant to the still probably over-used and relatively ineffective RRA (20), that will probably most benefit from this safe, cheap, and effective means of eliminating nonthreatening NNM in PTC. Although the technique requires an ability to recog- nize pathologic NNM on high-resolution US and neces- sitates special skill in USGB of awkwardly situated and increasingly small NNM, such skills can be learned, and, globally, many interested clinicians are indeed presently acquiring such talents in a variety of university and private practice settings.