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The value of quantitative shear wave elastography in differentiating the cervical lymph nodes in patients with thyroid nodules

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed at evaluating the diagnostic performance of quantitative shear wave elastography (SWE) in differentiating metastatic cervical lymph nodes from benign nodes in patients with thyroid nodules.

Methods

One hundred and forty-one cervical lymph nodes from 39 patients with thyroid nodules that were diagnosed as papillary thyroid cancer had been imaged with SWE. The shear elasticity modulus, which indicates the stiffness of the lymph nodes, was measured in terms of maximum shear elasticity modulus (maxSM), minimum shear elasticity modulus (minSM), mean shear elasticity modulus (meanSM), and standard deviation (SD) of the shear elasticity modulus.

Results

All the patients underwent thyroid surgery, 50 of the suspicious lymph nodes were resected, and 91 lymph nodes were followed up for 6 months. The maxSM value, minSM value, meanSM value, and SD value of the metastatic lymph nodes were significantly higher than those of the benign nodes. The area under the curve of the maxSM value, minSM value, meanSM value, and SD value were 0.918, 0.606, 0.865, and 0.915, respectively.

Conclusions

SWE can differentiate metastasis from benign cervical lymph nodes in patients with thyroid nodules, and the maxSM, meanSM, and SD may be valuable quantitative indicators for characterizing cervical lymph nodes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HUST, No. 2015LC021 and No. 2015YGYL019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ultrasound, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430022, China

    Jun You, Juan Chen, Feixiang Xiang, Yue Song, Simai Khamis, Chengfa Lu, Qing Lv, Yanrong Zhang & Mingxing Xie

  2. Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Wuhan, 430022, China

    Jun You, Juan Chen, Feixiang Xiang, Yue Song, Simai Khamis, Chengfa Lu, Qing Lv, Yanrong Zhang & Mingxing Xie

  3. Department of Radiology, Neuroradiology Section, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Yanrong Zhang

Authors
  1. Jun You
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  2. Juan Chen
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  3. Feixiang Xiang
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  4. Yue Song
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  5. Simai Khamis
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  6. Chengfa Lu
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  7. Qing Lv
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  8. Yanrong Zhang
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  9. Mingxing Xie
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yanrong Zhang or Mingxing Xie.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Ethical statements

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). This study was approved by Clinical Research Center of Wuhan Union Hospital, and the study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of Wuhan Union Hospital. Informed consent was obtained from all patients included in the study.

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You, J., Chen, J., Xiang, F. et al. The value of quantitative shear wave elastography in differentiating the cervical lymph nodes in patients with thyroid nodules. J Med Ultrasonics 45, 251–259 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10396-017-0819-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10396-017-0819-0

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