Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Subjects with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) usually have a long survival time after diagnosis. However, the prognosis of PTC subjects with lung metastasis noted at the time of initial diagnosis is unknown.

Material and methods: From 1998 to 2009, patients with PTC were recruited by medical chart review. Patients with lung metastasis at initial diagnosis (PTC-L) were identified. Their follow-up courses were evaluated and compared to patients without lung metastasis (PTC-NL).

Results: There were 453 patients with PTC. Among them, 15 (3.3%) had lung metastasis at initial diagnosis. Compared with PTC-NL, PTC-L patients were older (mean age 61.3±13.8 years, P=0.0005). There were no difference among gender (male 4.8 vs 2.7%, P=0.3764), tumor size (2.1±1.7 vs 2.5±1.6 cm, P=0.3578) or lymphnode involvement (60 vs 56.9%, P=0.8085) between PTC-L and PTC-NL. The mean follow-up period was 3.2±2 years (range 0.3–6.7 years) for PTC-L patients and 3.4±2.6 years (range 0.04–12.1 years) for PTC-NL patients. During the total follow-up period of 1558 person years, 1 PTC-L patient and 5 PTC-NL patients died. The difference was borderline significant (log-rank test, P=0.0506).

Conclusion: PTC-L patients were older than PTC-NL patients. The survival time of PTC-L and PTC-NL patients was borderline significantly different.