Prolonged remission of metastatic follicular thyroid carcinoma

Follicular thyroid carcinoma is associated with an extremely poor prognosis when metastatic lesions occur. Although radioiodine therapy for metastatic disease can extend patient survival for several years, its effect is usually only palliative. Herein we describe a 47-year-old man with metastatic follicular thyroid carcinoma who was in clinical remission for 30 years after surgical and radioiodine treatment of the original disease. To our knowledge, this is the longest reported remission of this disease. Possible reasons for the prolonged survival were "young" age at diagnosis, diploid DNA content of the tumor, skeletal lesions responsive to 131I therapy, and limited pulmonary disease.