Modern management of differentiated thyroid cancer

The outcome in differentiated thyroid cancer is excellent. Simple prognostic factors, including the age of the patient at diagnosis, the size of the primary cancer, completeness of surgical excision, and the presence of distant metastases, allow the clinician to judge how a patient will do. The preferred treatment is total thyroidectomy and in selected patients radioactive iodine can be used to ablate residual thyroid or functioning metastases in lymph nodes and distant sites. The physician has two excellent methods for following the patient: the whole-body scan with radionuclides of iodine, and measurement of serum thyroglobulin. In patients with elevated thyroglobulin and negative scans with radioactive iodine, there is increasing evidence that positron emission tomography (PET) is helpful in locating the site of thyroglobulin production.