Efficacy and Safety of Radiofrequency Ablation for Benign Thyroid Nodules: A Prospective Multicenter Study

The value of our present findings lies in validating the generalizability of RF ablation for nonfunctioning benign thyroid nodules in a prospective large population multicenter study. Additionally, trained operators, unified treatment protocols, and similar devices were used in our current investigation. Although the efficacy of thyroid RF ablation has been suggested in many previous reports, such as retrospective studies (5,6), randomized controlled trials (9,12,14,23,24), review articles (4,25,26), well as one systematic review and one meta-analysis each (3,27), the generalizability of RF ablation has not been well-established. The KSThR has been organizing a thyroid RF training program since 2007 (17). For our study, we invited radiologists who had undertaken that training program and had experience with more than 50 cases of thyroid RF ablation. A previous study (17) revealed that patients treated by experienced radiologists showed fewer complications than less experienced radiologists (