The American Thyroid Association (ATA) just wrapped up its 2025 annual conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. The five-day event, held September 10 through September 14, featured the latest research on thyroid health from current and future leaders in the thyroid health community. The 2025 ATA Annual Meeting was the world’s largest gathering of thyroidologists, making it an excellent opportunity to learn, discuss, and network.
With such a diverse array of topics presented, we wanted to take a few moments to spotlight some of the thyroid cancer-related posters that were presented during the ATA 2025 Annual Meeting. We previously previewed the sessions on thyroid cancer that were scheduled for the ATA 2025 conference. The following posters feature thyroid cancer topics like complications after modified radical neck dissection for medullary thyroid cancer, how tattoos affect preoperative thyroid carcinoma assessment, and more.
ATA 2025 Annual Meeting Thyroid Cancer Abstracts
- Description: There is a noted correlation between endocrine surgeries performed by high-volume surgeons and better outcomes. In the case report of a 57-year-old male who presented with a soft neck mass, he underwent drainage of the CT-identified cystic lesion, and an FNA was performed for the larger of the bilateral thyroid nodules also identified. Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) was identified, and total thyroidectomy followed. One month following surgery, an ultrasound revealed multiple suspicious lymph nodes bilaterally.
- Conclusion: The patient experienced an incomplete response to treatment because he was only partially treated at a low-volume center. High-volume thyroid surgeons (identified as performing more than 23-100 thyroidectomies per year) are associated with lower rates of cancer recurrence.
- Description: The study focused on reporting the three-year, patient-reported outcomes of patients with small, low-risk PTC who were offered the choice of active surveillance or immediate surgery.
- Conclusion: Researchers found that patient-reported outcomes did not notably differ between patients who chose active surveillance or immediate surgery. Notably, patients who went from active surveillance and opted for surgery reported greater cancer-related worry and decision regret.
Incidental Cervical Lymph Node Metastasis Following Partial Thyroidectomy
- Description: This study strove to determine the prevalence of incidental cervical lymph node metastasis following a partial thyroidectomy. All thyroid cancer cases between 2017 and 2025 that underwent thyroid lobectomy were queried from a pathology database at a tertiary medical center. Of the 289 thyroid lobectomies, 25 (9%) involved incidental cervical metastasis on final pathology. Of the 25, 19 underwent observation, and 6 underwent immediate completion. No patients had a documented recurrence during the follow-up period.
- Conclusion: Within the past eight years, providers have been opting to observe low-risk tumors with incidental metastatic disease following lobectomy, rather than immediate completion thyroidectomy. In the short term, there was no noted heightened risk for recurrence or needing a delayed completion lobectomy.
Complications After Modified Radical Neck Dissection in Patients with Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma
- Description: The purpose of the study was to investigate surgical complications after modified radical neck dissection (mRND) for medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) from a single, tertiary referral oncology center to ascertain if they occur less often after prophylactic than after therapeutic mRND.
- Conclusion: Complications following therapeutic mRND and prophylactic mRND for MTC occurred in 30% and 33% respectively. Collected data support the de-escalation of surgical treatment of clinically negative lateral node basins.
Surgical Radicality in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma: The Impact of Tattoos on Lymph Node Assessment
- Description: Fine-needle aspiration biopsy confirmed papillary thyroid carcinoma in seven individual cases from two institutions. Cervical ultrasound revealed lymphadenopathy in various levels within all seven patients. While all seven patients had tattoos, all five patients with jugular lymphadenopathy had ipsilateral shoulder tattoos, and in one patient, the tattoo extended from the supraclavicular area onto the neck.
- Conclusion: With consideration for the small sample size, the findings illustrate a potential connection between reactive lymphadenopathy and tattoos, potentially complicating preoperative lymph node assessment.
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