Age as a Prognostic Factor in Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer

Abstract

Background. Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is one of the tumors with the shortest survival in human medicine. Aim. The aim was to determine the importance of age in survival of patients with ATC. Material and Methods. We analyzed the data on 150 patients diagnosed with ATC in the period from 1995 to 2006. The Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test were used to determine overall survival. Prognostic factors were identified by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis. Results. The youngest patient was 35 years old and the oldest was 89 years old. According to univariate regression analysis, age was significantly associated with longer survival in patients with ATC. In multivariate regression analysis, patients age, presence of longstanding goiter, whether surgical treatment is carried out or not, type of surgery, tumor multicentricity, presence of distant metastases, histologically proven preexistent papillary carcinoma, radioiodine therapy, and postoperative radiotherapy were included. According to multivariate analysis, besides surgery (P = 0.000, OR = 0.43, 95% CI = 0.29–0.63), only patients age (P = 0.023, OR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.49–0.95) was independent prognostic factor of favorable survival in patients with ATC. Conclusion. Age is a factor that was independently associated with survival time in ATC. Anaplastic thyroid cancer has the best prognosis in patients younger than 50 years.

Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma: review of treatment protocols

“…In multiple retrospective studies analyzing disease course and aiming to identify prognostic factors for ATC, reported OS was highly variable ranging from few weeks to several years (Sugitani et al 2012, Sun et al 2013, Zivaljevic et al 2014. This implies that although ATC is fatal in most cases, risk stratification might be helpful.…”

“…Negative prognostic markers such as older age, initial distant metastatic disease, large primary tumor diameter (>5 cm) and elevated white blood count (WBC) have been described in several retrospective studies (Orita et al 2011, Sugitani et al 2012, Zivaljevic et al 2014.…”

“…ATC is per se classified as stage IV disease by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) and is further divided in stage IVA (T4a: intrathyroidal ATC and M0); stage IVB (T4b: extrathyroidal ATC and M0) and stage IVC disease (any T and M1) . Initial stage IVC disease is found in 20-40% of all ATC (Sugitani et al 2012, Sun et al 2013, Zivaljevic et al 2014.…”

“…Therefore, it is possible that a subset of ATC arises from DTC. Moreover, histology shows that DTC co-exists in around 30-50% of ATC (Sugitani et al 2012, Zivaljevic et al 2014, Tiedje et al 2017.…”

Prognostic Factors for Survival in Patients Treated with Multimodal Therapy for Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer

“…Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is a rare but very aggressive type of cancer associated with a dismal prognosis (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). It represents only 1-5% of all thyroid tumours.…”