Objective To compare the health-related quality of life(HRQoL)of patients with
papillary thyroid microcarcinoma(PTMC)treated by different modalities. Methods The PTMC patients
after treatment who came to our department for follow-up from October to December in 2019 were enrolled and assigned into three groups according to treatment modalities:
radiofrequency ablation(RFA)group(n=80), hemithyroidectomy(HT)group(n=34), and total
thyroidectomy(TT)group(n=35).All patients completed three scales:short form 36-item health survey(SF-36),
thyroid cancer-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire(THYCA-QoL), and fear of progression questionnaire-short form(FoP-Q-SF).Multivariate linear regression analysis was employed to adjust for confounders and the quality of life scores were compared among the three treatment modalities. Results In the SF-36, physical component summary(PCS)(P=0.006, P=0.033)and role-physical(RP)(P=0.003, P=0.001)scores of patients in the RFA and HT groups were significantly higher than those in the TT group, whereas PCS(P=1.000)and RP(P=1.000)showed no significant difference between the RFA group and the HT group.In addition, the mental component summary(MCS)score in RFA group was higher than that in TT group(P=0.034).The THYCA-QoL demonstrated that the patients in TT group complained more about
scar than the patients in HT(P=0.003)and RFA(P<0.001)groups, and the patients in the RFA group complained less about
weight gain than those in the HT(P=0.028)and TT(P<0.001)groups.In the FoP-Q-SF, the scores of the quality of life of patients concerned about
disease progression had no significant difference among the three groups(P> 0.05).Conclusion Compared with traditional open
surgery, ultrasound-guided RFA has unique advantages in improving patients' quality of life and can be used as an alternative to open surgery for PTMC.