In this issue of JAMA Otolaryngology—Head & Neck Surgery, Kennedy and colleagues describe intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) using the near-infrared (NIR) agent indocyanine green (ICG) to identify parathyroid glands. One of the most important contributions of this study is that it directly compares 2 methods of fluorescent imaging—use of autofluorescence ("label-free") vs use of ICG as a contrast agent. The use of IMI demonstrated superior signal-to-background ratios (SBRs) compared with autofluorescence. Excitingly, in the 2 patients who underwent reexploration parathyroidectomy, IMI successfully localized the ectopic parathyroid gland, which could not be identified by conventional methods. These results suggest that IMI is an accurate and reproducible method for localizing parathyroid glands and that ICG imaging is supe rior to autofluorescence for parathyroid gland identification.
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