153 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Angelos, R. H. Grogan (eds.), Diffcult Decisions in Endocrine Surgery, Diffcult Decisions in Surgery: An Evidence-Based Approach, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92860-9_14 B. James (*) Section of Endocrine Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA e-mail: bjames1@bidmc.harvard.edu R. H. Grogan Baylor College of Medicine, Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Endocrine Surgery, Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: Raymon.Grogan@bcm.edu E. L. Kaplan Department of Surgery, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA P. Angelos Department of Surgery and MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: pangelos@surgery.bsd.uchicago.edu 14 Prophylactic Versus Selective Central Neck Dissection in Pediatric Papillary Thyroid Cancer Benjamin James, Raymon H. Grogan, Edwin L. Kaplan, and Peter Angelos Abstract The frst case of thyroid carcinoma in a child was described in 1902. Following this, Crile published the frst case series of pediatric thyroid cancer in 1959, whereby he characterized pediatric thyroid cancer in 18 children. He noted that pediatric thyroid cancer was more commonly metastatic to cervical lymph nodes and to the lungs than was described in the adult population. Despite fnding these cancers to be more aggressive than in adults, only one of the patients died of thyroid cancer and four of them were alive with lung metastases. This publication spawned many subsequent studies confrming these fndings. As a result, there has been much debate on the appropriate surgical treatment of thyroid cancer in the pediatric population both with respect to the extent of surgery and the use of radioactive iodine. Keywords Pediatric thyroid cancer · Adolescent thyroid cancer · Prophylactic neck dissection · Papillary thyroid cancer