Advances in the management of patients with thyroid disease

Discoveries related to thyroid immunology, especially concerning the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor, may facilitate new immunologic approaches to the therapy of Graves' disease and the thyroiditis syndromes. Advances in genetics are being applied to the thyroid hormone resistance syndromes and papillary and medullary carcinomas. The development of ever more sensitive TSH assays has led to the detection of subclinical thyroid disease, which has special implications for the sick and elderly patients. Sensitive TSH assays also allow more precise titration of levothyroxine (T4) dosages, especially for patients with a past history of thyroid cancer. Evidence continues to accumulate suggesting that postmenopausal women on T4 doses that suppress the TSH level below 0.1 ulU/mL have lower bone mineral density than matched patients with healthy TSH levels. Also, pregnant hypothyroid women need higher T4 doses to normalize the TSH levels. In the evaluation of thyroid nodules, fine-needle aspiration biopsy is the single most definitive modality in selecting the patients for surgery. Scintigraphy provides a complimentary role, especially in defining autonomously functioning thyroid adenomas (AFTA), because these should not be treated with T4 suppression. Ultrasound-guided needle biopsy is occasionally helpful with nodules that are difficult to palpate. Concern for possible tracheal compression after treatment of toxic multinodular goiter with large doses of radioactive iodine (I-131) in the range of 50 to 150 mCi (1.85 to 5.5 GBq) does not seem warranted. Work, primarily out of Italy, suggests AFTA can be ablated with repeat ethanol injections. Residual tissues after thyroidectomy for differentiated carcinoma can be "stunned" by tracer doses of 131I greater than 3.0 mCi (111 MBq), which diminishes the uptake and effectiveness of a subsequent therapy dose. Positron emission tomograph, imaging with thallium-201, and Technetium 99m Sestamibi can identify a small number of patients shown to have metastases from differentiated thyroid carcinoma by increasing thyroglobulin levels in the absence of 131I uptake. Several groups have recently advocated treating such patients empirically with 131I.