Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy with an increasing incidence over the past few years. Surgery is considered the primary therapeutic option, which often involves lymph node dissection. The aim of this study was to assess the role of carbon nanoparticles, a novel agent, in thyroid cancer surgery. For that purpose, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, Cochrane and Google Scholar databases from 1 January 2002 to 31 January 2022. Ultimately, 20 articles with a total number of 2920 patients were included in the analysis. The outcome of the analysis showed that the use of carbon nanoparticles is associated with a higher number of harvested lymph nodes (WMD, 1.47, 95% CI, 1.13 to 1.82, p < 0.001) and a lower rate of accidental parathyroid gland removal (OR 0.34, CI 95% 0.24 to 0.50, p < 0.001). Based on these results, we suggest that carbon nanoparticles are applied in thyroid cancer surgery on a wider scale, so that these findings can be confirmed by future research on the subject.
Keywords: carbon nanoparticles; lymph nodes; parathyroid glands; thyroid cancer.