Patients
Patients with a final diagnosis of WDTC who were treated at the Tel-Aviv
‘Sourasky’ Medical Center between January 1st 2006 and
December 31st 2015 were identified from the
institutional electronic database. Demographic, clinical, pathologic,
and radiologic data on all included patients were extracted. Inclusion
criteria were all patients diagnosed with WDTC and confirmed ETE as
described in the operative and pathological reports. All patients had
undergone surgery that included at least a total thyroidectomy as a
first procedure, or a subsequent completion thyroidectomy. The tracheal
invasion group included only patients diagnosed with invasion stage I
and II according to Shin et al.[14]. All patients in the tracheal
invasion group had undergone a shave resection of the trachea. Patients
with other forms of ETE (e.g., strap muscles, RLN, esophagus, larynx,
and subcutaneous soft tissue) that had undergone a thyroidectomy with
excision of all gross extra-thyroidal disease were included in the
non-tracheal invasion group. Patients were excluded from the study for
the following reasons: insufficient preoperative investigational
measures (that included at least a neck ultrasound and a fine-needle
aspiration), pathologies other than WDTC , undergoing surgical
procedures that did not include at least a total t or completion
thyroidectomy, partial resections of gross disease with residual
macroscopic disease (R2 resection), minimal ETE (e.g. focal ETE detected
only on histological examination), ETE invading only peri-thyroidal fat
[15], or tracheal resection procedures (window or full
circumferential resection).