Eighth edition of tumor-node-metastasis staging system improve survival predictability for papillary, but not...

This study aimed to evaluate the proposed changes in the eighth edition of the tumor-node-metastasis staging system (TNM-8) compared with the seventh edition (TNM-7) in terms of pathologic subtypes, using a large multicenter thyroid cancer cohort.

We retrospectively reviewed 7717 patients with papillary (PTC) and 273 with follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) who underwent thyroid surgery between 1996 and 2005. We assessed the proportion of variation explained (PVE) to compare the predictive accuracy of disease-specific survival (DSS).

During a median 11.3 years of follow-up, 169 (2%) disease-specific deaths were recorded. In patients with PTC, the 10-year DSS rates of stages I, II, III, and IV disease in TNM-8 were 99.6%, 95.7%, 81.5%, and 54.8%, respectively; the corresponding rates in TNM-7 were 99.6%, 98.4%, 98.4%, and 90.1%, respectively. In patients with FTC, the 10-year DSS rates of stages I, II, III, and IV disease in TNM-8 were 97.2%, 69.8%, 50.0%, and 45.5%, respectively; the corresponding rates in TNM-7 were 98.3%, 90.0%, 92.3%, and 42.1%, respectively. Comparing TNM-7 and TNM-8, the PVE values increased from 3.4% to 4.7% in the PTC group, whereas they decreased from 17.5% to 14.5% in the FTC group.

Our study suggests that the changes in TNM-8 have improved the clinical usefulness of the TNM staging system in terms of predicting DSS in patients with PTC but not FTC. Further studies to establish a more predictable TNM staging system that focuses on patients with FTC are necessary.