The Impact of Pathologically Positive Lymph Nodes in the Clinically Negative Neck: An Analysis of 39,301 Patients with Papillary Thyroid Cancer

Purpose Management of patients with low-risk papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) with clinically uninvolved lymph nodes (cN0 LNs), but who harbor metastatic central LNs (pN1a), remains unclear. The number of central LNs examined, radioactive iodine (RAI) utilization, and survival were compared across cN0 patients based on pN stage: pN0 (negative) versus pNx (unknown) versus pN1a (pathologically positive).