The 2025 American Thyroid Association Guidelines for the Management of Differentiated Thyroid Cancer in Adults, supported centrally by evidence-based medical evidence, has introduced systematic updates to the diagnostic pathways, treatment regimens, and follow-up strategies for thyroid cancer. Its content not only covers multidisciplinary fields such as internal medicine, surgery, radiology, and pathology, but also fully incorporates perspectives from patient populations—further enhancing the alignment of the guidelines with clinical practice and achieving comprehensive coverage of the whole-course management for differentiated thyroid cancer. In the field of surgical management, the guidelines focus primarily on four core areas: the scientific definition of thyroid resection scope, the rational planning of lymph node dissection scope, the precise protection of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, and the whole-course preservation of parathyroid function. For these key aspects, the guideline has put forward specific and guiding recommendations based on rigorous evidence-based medical evidence and multidisciplinary team consensus. This article integrates the expert interpretation findings from the 2024 American Thyroid Association annual meeting, providing a prospective organization and summary of the key clinical practice points and basis for updates in its surgical management chapter.
Objective To evaluate the diagnostic yield and safety of two biopsy methods, electromagnetic navigational bronchoscopy (ENB) and transthoracic needle biopsy (TTNB), in peripheral pulmonary lesions. To select a low-risk and high-benefit biopsy method based on the clinical characteristics of the lesions and patients. Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on inpatients who underwent ENB and/or TTNB for peripheral pulmonary lesions in Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University. Propensity score matching was used to compare the diagnostic yield and safety of the two biopsy methods. Results A total of 126 patients were included in the ENB group, and 104 patients in the TTNB group. After propensity score matching, 83 matched pairs were obtained. The TTNB group exhibited a significantly higher diagnostic yield compared with the ENB group (90.4% vs. 48.2%, P<0.001), but it was also associated with a higher incidence of pneumothorax (1.2% vs. 21.7%, P<0.001). In the ENB group, the diagnostic efficacy was correlated with lesion diameter (P<0.001, OR=0.183, 95%CI 0.071 - 0.470), but there was no statistically significant difference in the diagnostic yield among different lung segments (P>0.05). In the TTNB group, lesion characteristics did not significantly affect the diagnostic yield, but a lesion diameter ≤30 mm (P=0.019, OR=5.359, 95%CI 1.320 - 21.753) and a distance from the pleura ≥20mm (P=0.030, OR=6.399, 95%CI 1.192 - 34.360) increased the risk of pneumothorax. When stratified based on lesion and patient blood characteristics, no significant difference was found in the diagnostic yield between the two groups for characteristics such as left upper lobe (P=0.195), right middle lobe (P=0.333), solid with cavity (P=0.567), or abnormal serum white blood cell count (P=0.077). However, the incidence of pneumothorax in the TTNB group was higher than that in the ENB group. Conclusions The diagnostic yield of ENB is affected by the size of the lesion, while the incidence of pneumothorax in TTNB is influenced by both lesion size and distance from the pleura. In cases with lesions located in the left upper lobe, right middle lobe, solid with cavity, or with abnormal serum white blood cell count, selecting ENB for biopsy is considered preferable to TTNB.
Clinical practice guidelines are decision-making tools for bridging the gap between current best evidence and clinical practice. Studies have shown poor clinical applicability of existing guidelines, which may not be solved by improving the quality of guidelines alone. National medical management service guidance center is developing clinical practice guidelines of clinical evaluation system of construction projects, based on evidence-based method formulated by the target users of clinical guidelines evaluators’ applicability evaluation system of clinical practice guidelines. It aims to identify guidelines with high clinical applicability and provide the evaluation results of clinical applicability to developers and revisers of clinical guidelines, and then optimize the development and update, eventually improving the clinical applicability of guides and promote Chinese clinical guidelines in clinical application.