Adjunctive management of thyroid cancer: chemotherapy

The majority of well-differentiated carcinoma of the thyroid can be effectively treated by surgery and thyroid hormone administration, or in combination with radioiodine therapy. Occasional patients with well-differentiated carcinoma, and patients with medullary carcinoma and anaplastic carcinoma should be considered for chemotherapy. Doxorubicin has been shown to be active in this neoplasm. In addition, there are chemotherapeutic agents shown to be active in small numbers of patients with this disease, but most of them have not received an adequate trial. Multiple-agent chemotherapy has also been tried in this disease. However, average response rate of multiple-agent chemotherapy appears to be only slightly better than that of doxorubicin single-agent chemotherapy. The importance of group approach in evaluating chemotherapy program is presented.