Cai WJ, Li Y, Wei Y, Zhao ZL, Wu J, Cao SL, Peng LL, Li SQ, Yu MA. Thermal field management improves patient-reported outcomes during ablation for papillary thyroid carcinoma: A retrospective cohort study. World J Radiol 2025; 17(9): 111924 [PMID: 41025064 DOI: 10.4329/wjr.v17.i9.111924]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Ming-An Yu, Department of Interventional Medicine, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, No. 2 Yinghuayuan East Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100029, China. yma301@163.com
Research Domain of This Article
Oncology
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Cohort Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Radiol. Sep 28, 2025; 17(9): 111924 Published online Sep 28, 2025. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v17.i9.111924
Thermal field management improves patient-reported outcomes during ablation for papillary thyroid carcinoma: A retrospective cohort study
Wen-Jia Cai, Yan Li, Ying Wei, Zhen-Long Zhao, Jie Wu, Shi-Liang Cao, Li-Li Peng, Shu-Qi Li, Ming-An Yu
Wen-Jia Cai, Yan Li, Ying Wei, Zhen-Long Zhao, Jie Wu, Shi-Liang Cao, Li-Li Peng, Shu-Qi Li, Ming-An Yu, Department of Interventional Medicine, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China
Co-first authors: Wen-Jia Cai and Yan Li.
Author contributions: Cai WJ, Li Y, Yu MA participated in the conception and design of the study; Cai WJ, Li Y, Wei Y, Zhao ZL, Wu J, Cao SL, Peng LL, Li SQ were involved in the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; Cai WJ, Li Y wrote the manuscript; Zhao ZL and Yu MA accessed and verified the study data. All authors critically reviewed and approved the final manuscript to be published. Cai WJ and Li Y contributed equally to this work as co-first authors.
Supported by National High Level Hospital Clinical Research Funding, No. 2022-NHLHCRF-PY-07; and National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 62176268.
Institutional review board statement: This retrospective study was approved by was approved by the Ethics Committees of China-Japan Friendship Hospital (2023-KY-250).
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from all patients.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement:
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request at yma301@163.com.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ming-An Yu, Department of Interventional Medicine, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, No. 2 Yinghuayuan East Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100029, China. yma301@163.com
Received: July 14, 2025 Revised: August 9, 2025 Accepted: September 4, 2025 Published online: September 28, 2025 Processing time: 75 Days and 17.9 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Thermal ablation (TA) has been proved to be effective and safe as minimally invasive treatment method for thyroid nodules. However, patients' experience during the procedures and quality of life varies among operators.
AIM
To explore strategy to improve quality of life and subjective experiences during TA for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) based on thermal field management (TFM).
METHODS
This retrospective propensity-matched cohort study was conducted in a single center. A total of 490 patients with PTC treated with TA from September 2023 to August 2024 were studied and divided into two groups (TFM group and non-TFM group) according to treatment strategies. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to control for confounding factors. Complications, side effect and complaints of patients were compared between the two groups.
RESULTS
A total of 113 patients (41.7 ± 10.6; 31 men, 82 women) were assigned to the TFM group, and 377 patients (mean age, 41.1 ± 10.7 year; 116 men, 261 women) were assigned to the non-TFM group. After PSM, a total of 108 patients were included in the TFM group, and 216 patients were included in the non-TFM group. The median follow-up was 10 months (range from 4-15 months). The incidence of voice change in the TFM group was significantly lower than that in the non-TFM group (0.9% vs 6.5%; P = 0.049). Although there was no statistically significant difference in rate of pain between the two groups, the proportion of complaining of pain in the TFM group was numerically lower than that in the non-TFM group (3.7% vs 9.7%, P = 0.090).
CONCLUSION
TFM, as a novel procedural optimization technique, can effectively improve quality of life and subjective experiences of patients during TA for PTC.
Core Tip: In this study, we introduce the concept of thermal field management (TFM) for the first time as a means to optimize clinical practice in thermal ablation of papillary thyroid carcinoma. This approach does not rely on advanced technical maneuvers but represents a conceptual shift toward more precise, patient-centered ablation. Our results indicate that the TFM strategy effectively enhances quality of life and patient-reported outcomes by reducing specific complications and symptoms.
