Diagnostic Accuracy of Ultrasonography in Revision Thyroid Surgery: Can It Predict Disease Outcomes?

Revision thyroid surgery for residual/recurrent disease is known to have higher complication rates because of parathyroid injury and recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) damage. The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of USG in predicting recurrent disease and disease outcomes in patients undergoing reoperation for recurrent/residual thyroid cancer. We performed a retrospective analysis of all thyroid reoperations from 2015 to 2017. Preoperative USG findings were categorized as per prespecified disease stations in the neck and compared with histopathology to calculate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of USG. Survival analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier curves. Two hundred fifty patients were included in the analysis. In a reoperative setting, USG had an overall sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of 89%, 77%, 89%, 94%, and 60%, respectively. We found a significantly lower disease-free survival in patients who had radiologically detected recurrent disease as compared to disease detected only on histopathology. USG has a reasonable accuracy in determining status of lesions in patients undergoing revision thyroid surgeries.