Course of Disease and Clinical Management of Patients with Poorly Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma

In patients with poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma, the clinical course and prognostic value of response to initial radioiodine therapy is evaluated.

In 47 patients, clinical and imaging features were analyzed. Patients were stratified in no (NED), biochemical (B-ED) and structural evidence of disease (S-ED) assessed at the first diagnostic control and its impact on survival was evaluated. Further, possible risk factors for a shorter disease-specific survival rate (DSS) were analyzed.

In total, 17/47 patients consisted of NED, 10/47 were B-ED and 20/47 S-ED patients. At the last follow-up, 18/47 patients were NED, 2/47 patients B-ED and 27/47 patients S-ED. The median survival time was only reached for the S-ED group (median 3.9 years, 95%CI 2.8-5.1 years) and was not reached in the B-ED and NED groups. Metastases were diagnosed by a ¹⁸F-FDG-PET/CT scan in all cases and a multivariate analysis showed that the PET-positivity of metastases was the only significant predictor of DSS (p = 0.036).

The response to initial surgery and radioiodine therapy in PDTC patients can achieve an excellent outcome and a further follow-up should be refined based on findings at the first diagnostic control. However, patients with an incomplete response and metastatic patients who become mostly radioiodine refractory show a significantly shorter survival, which makes accurate staging by ¹⁸F-FDG-PET/CT imaging crucial.