Immediate Surgery Might Be a Better Option for Subcapsular Thyroid Microcarcinomas

Table 1

Characteristics of the study subjects.

	STM (N = 93)	NSTM (N = 195)	P value
	Number	Number
Age (year)	43 (35 – 42)	41 (33 – 49)	0.267
Male	23 (24.7%)	45 (23.1%)	0.757
Size (cm)	0.7 (0.5 - 0.8)	0.7 (0.6 - 0.8)	0.985
Microsciopic-ETE	67 (72.0%)	0	≤ 0.001
Macroscopic-ETE	42 (45.2%)	0	≤ 0.001
Sternothyroid muscle	22	0	≤ 0.001
Trachea	6	0	0.001
RLN	15	0	≤ 0.001
Lymph node metastasis
N1a	37 (39.8%)	61 (31.3%)	0.154
N1b	5 (5.4%)	10 (5.1%)	0.929
Tumor multifocality	16 (17.2%)	32 (16.4%)	0.866
Bilateral lesions	12 (12.9%)	36 (18.5%)	0.237
Hashimoto's thyroiditis	24 (25.8%)	59 (30.3%)	0.436

STM, subcapsular thyroid microcarcinoma; NSTM, nonsubcapsular thyroid microcarcinoma; ETE, extrathyroidal extension; RLN, recurrent laryngeal nerve; N1a, metastases to central cervical lymph nodes; N1b, metastases to lateral neck lymph nodes.
Continuous data are presented as the median with interquartile ranges.
Determined using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
Determined using the Chi-square test.
Determined using the Fisher's exact test.