Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Role of Intraoperative Frozen Section if Suspicious for Papillary Thyroid Cancer

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of General Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Abstract

Introduction: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), the most prevalent kind of well-differentiated malignant tumor
of the thyroid.
Aim of work: Reviewing frozen section’s involvement in patients with suspected papillary thyroid cancer (accuracy,
sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value) as well as its impact on surgical
outcomes and any postoperative problems was the aim of the current study.
Patients and methods: Fifteen research articles were included in the current study after around 400 publications
were found and those that did not meet the inclusion criteria were excluded. The 15 studies that made up
our meta-analysis comprised 2659 patients who had intraoperative frozen sections following either a complete
thyroidectomy or a lobectomy. Of these, 577 instances were found to be benign based on intraoperative frozen
sections, whereas 2011 cases involved the discovery of malignancy.
Results: Accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of
frozen section in suspicious papillary thyroid carcinoma were all examined in the current meta-analysis study. The
results showed that the use of frozen section intraoperatively in suspicious papillary thyroid cancer cases was supported
by accuracy of 91.38%, sensitivity of 90.45%, specificity of 99.57%, PPV of 99.95%, and NPV of 54.39%.
Conclusion: The current analysis shows that the rate of false negative frozen sections is 7.4%, which supports
the usage of frozen sections and is consistent with previous research.

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Ain Shams Journal of Surgery
Volume 18, Issue 2
April 2025
Pages 111-121

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