Medullary thyroid cancer: multivariate analysis of prognostic factors influencing survival

Medullary thyroid carcinoma: the influence of policy changing in clinical characteristics and disease progression

“…One further reason is that during previous years, smaller tumors could possibly have escaped diagnosis as ultrasound was rarely performed before 1990 (12,16,20,21). Tumor size is a significant prognostic factor for the outcome of MTCs according to many studies (14,22,23,24). Concerning micro-MTCs, these appear to have significantly better outcome and increased biological cure compared with macrocarcinomas (20); however, 10% of these patients may occasionally have lymph node invasion at diagnosis (25,26) and thus early intervention appears to be important also for small tumors.…”

“…It should be noted that although one would expect a younger age at diagnosis in the group diagnosed after 2001, there was no such finding in our cohort. The stage at diagnosis is consistently found to be the most important prognostic factor for disease progression and survival (4,5,6,12,22,23,32), so, at least for the sporadic cases, the diagnosis at an earlier stage is favorable for the outcome of the disease. Indeed, Bergholm et al (33), in a study performed in Sweden, have reported that patients in stages I and II have a relative survival similar to the general population.…”

Elevated level of serum carbohydrate antigen 19.9 as predictor of mortality in patients with advanced medullary thyroid cancer

“…Many studies have been published about the clinical and pathological features that can predict the prognosis of MTC patients. Advanced age at diagnosis, advanced stage of the disease and, in particular, the presence of distant metastasis at the time of diagnosis have been found to be correlated with a worse prognosis (6,7,8,9). RE-arranged during transfection (RET) somatic mutations, which are present in 40-50% of sporadic MTC patients, have also been recognized as a poor prognostic factor for the outcome of these patients (10,11,12,13).…”

An Unusual Presentation of Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma

“…The best prognosis occurs in young patients undergoing total thyroidectomy and neck dissection. External beam RT significantly reduces local relapse in patients with limited nodal disease [7] but in our case even the disease was extensive, it was suppressed with radiotherapy.…”