Over a time span of 13 years, 697 patients were included, 15 ofwhom (2.2%) had a positive cytology. Thus, apparently it takes a very large patient cohort to enable the identification of a verysmall number of patients at higher risk. Furthermore, there aremore sensitive IPTC detection methods, such asimmunocytochemistry or RT-PCR , with detectionrates of 12–47%. Nevertheless, despite this higher sensitivity,the significance of IPTC for survival remains unclear.