The benefits of radioactive iodine ablation for patients with intermediate-risk papillary thyroid cancer

The beneficial effects of radioactive iodine (RAI) ablation for intermediate-risk papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) patients are still controversial.

To determine the impact of RAI therapy on disease-specific survival (DSS) in patients with intermediate-risk PTC, we retrospectively analyzed the data of 23107 intermediate-risk PTC patients who underwent primary thyroidectomy with or without RAI in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database.

RAI therapy was significantly associated with improved DSS (adjusted HR = 0.65, P = 0.017) in intermediate-risk PTC patients after multivariate adjusting for clinicopathological characteristics. However, subgroup analyses demonstrated that RAI ablation was only associated with improved DSS in patients with male gender (adjusted HR = 0.47, P = 0.005), age ≥ 45 years (adjusted HR = 0.34, P < 0.001) and tumor size > 20 mm (adjusted HR = 0.58, P = 0.007).

RAI decision-making should be considered on an individual basis rather than "one size fits all" in intermediate-risk PTC patients; only patients with male gender, age ≥ 45 years, and tumor size > 20 mm may benefit from RAI therapy.