Anaplastic giant-cell carcinoma of the thyroid.A study of treatment and prognosis

Abstract

In 79 cases of histologically verified anaplastic giant-cell carcinoma, symptoms, treatment, and prognosis were documented. Seventy-eight patients are dead, the mean survival time being 2.5 months. One patient is cured. It was concluded that surgery and/or radiotherapy alone are not sufficient. The results from an additional 8 patients also treated with methotexate indicate a positive therapeutic effect, the mean survival time being 9.4 months. Disappearance of recurrent tumor or pulmonary metastases was noted in 2 patients.Cancer 35 : 1293-1295, 1 975.

Completely resected anaplastic thyroid carcinoma combined with adjuvant chemotherapy and irradiation is associated with prolonged survival

“…An aggressive attempt at maximal tumor debulking followed by adjuvant therapy was found to be warranted in A naplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is an extremely aggressive neoplasm, and patient death usually occurs a few months after diagnosis. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Management is particularly difficult for this cancer because patients usually present with both extensive local disease and distant metastases. 9 -13 The aggressive behavior of ATC, even if ATC is discovered when it is still localized to the thyroid gland, usually portends such a poor outcome that it is classified by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) as Stage IV regardless of its tumor, node, or metastasis (TNM) status.…”

Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma: three protocols combining doxorubicin, hyperfractionated radiotherapy and surgery

“…Most patients suffering from ATC die due to uncontrolled local tumour invasion causing suffocation (Jereb et al, 1975;Junor et al, 1992). ATC is a rare disease and the vast majority of the patients affected are older than 60 years (Nel et al, 1985;Demeter et al, 1991;Tan et al, 1995;Ain, 1998).…”

Spindle and Giant Cell Carcinoma of the Thyroid

“…2,3 This finding was unexpected and indicates that the risk of transformation from differentiated to anaplastic thyroid malignancy is not time related.…”

“…All attempts at treatment fail in patients with bulky, unresectable lesions and they generally survive only a few weeks or months. 3 Occasional reports have described good results in undifferentiated thyroid carcinoma with radiation therapy alone or in combination with chemotherapy. 6,7 However, in these reports the small-cell type anaplastic lesions, which usually respond well to radiation and chemotherapy and carry a much better prognosis, were not classified and analyzed separately, therefore creating a misleading favorable bias.…”

“…3 Initial success with actinomycin D combined with surgery and radiation therapy has been reported 8 but a later publication from the same institution indicated that these favorable early results had not been maintained and that this drug was no longer being used as a single agent.…”