Thyroid Ablation After Thyroid Cancer Recurrence in a Hostile Neck

Hanna Thompson discusses her CIO2023 abstract, "CIO 2023-31 Thyroid Ablation after Thyroid Cancer Recurrence in a Hostile Neck ."

Thyroid Ablation after Thyroid Cancer Recurrence in a Hostile Neck from HMP on Vimeo.

My name is Hannah Thompson. I'm a 4th year medical student at the University of Louisville, and I'm here today to talk about my poster thyroid ablation after thyroid cancer recurrence in a hostile So we, in this case, describe the radiofrequency ablation, or RFA, of a patient who had recurrent thyroid cancer and was deferred by surgery. She had previously undergone total thyroidectomy, multiple neck dissections and postoperative radioactive iodine ablation for papillary thyroid carcinoma. Increasing, thyroglobulin indicated a recurrence of her cancer. She had a PET CT which showed nodal metastasis in the right thyroid bed.

This lesion was very close to the right common carotid artery and so She was not considered a surgical candidate for her recurrent thyroid cancer. So in this case, hydro dissection was performed Prior to RFA, so a mixture of saline and lidocaine were infused into the right neck to sort of peel away the, metastatic target from the common carotid artery, ablation then proceeded with the moving shot technique to ensure that the tissue didn't overheat and that the entire nodule was treated. After the procedure immediately, Duplex ultrasound showed that there were no flow disturbances indicating no injury to the common carotid artery. And then 5 weeks after the procedure, she had repeat PETCT, which showed that the cancer had been successfully treated. So most often the recurrent, the first line treatment for either primary or recurrent thyroid cancer is Surgery.

A patient that under does undergo surgery often develops kind of a hostile neck Because they have increased scarring of the thyroid bed and so in recurrent thyroid cancer particularly RFA With that hydrodissection technique can be very useful in treating the malignancy and protecting the surrounding structures.