Treatment Outcome and Prognostic Factors of Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma: A Single Institution Experience in Egypt

Abstract

Introduction: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is a rare lethal malignancy. It is one of the most aggressive human malignancies with limited progress in finding effective therapies. Aim: We aimed to study the treatment outcome and prognostic factors of ATC patients treated at our institution. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed charts of 30 ATC patients, treated at the Clinical Oncology Department, AinShams University from 2006 to 2017. The clinical characteristics and factors affecting survival were studied. Kaplan-Meier survival curve was used to analyze the overall survival (OS) of the patients. Results: The median age of patients was 60 years and males represented 63% of them. Almost half of patients (47%) had stage IVA disease. Equal number of patients received combined modality treatment versus single modality treatment (37% each). The median OS was 3 months (95% Confidence interval: 1.429-4.571). Variables associated with significantly better OS in univariate analysis included male sex (p=0.04), stage IVA disease (p=0.012), surgical treatment (p=0.034), radiotherapy (p=0.003), and combined modality treatment (p=0.005). However, only female sex was identified as significant poor prognostic variable of OS (p=0.043) by multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Our results of treatment outcome and prognosis of ATC agree with most of the literature. Multimodality treatment is currently the standard of care. While still there is no successful treatment of this rapidly fatal disease, exploration of novel therapies and approaches are warranted to help improve the outcome.