Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: To investigate the influence of serum TgAb on the therapeutic outcome in papillary and follicular thyroid cancer patients.

Methods: In 1378 papillary and follicular thyroid cancer patients (women, 1055 and men, 323; mean age, 42.5 years) with T2 and higher, or N1, or M1 classifications in TNM staging who had undergone total thyroidectomy, we recorded the serum TgAb data (on thyroxin therapy) 1 year (±3 months) after thyroidectomy. The patients were classified as negative TgAb or positive TgAb on the basis of their serum TgAb levels 1 year after surgery (<50 or ≥50 IU/mL).

Results: Among the 1378 patients, 77 were with positive TgAb and 1301 were with negative TgAb. The median follow-up duration was 11.7 years (range, 2–27.2 years). The patients with positive TgAb had comparable prognosis to the patients with negative TgAb (22.1% cancer recurrence vs 21.1% cancer recurrence, P=0.845; 9.1% cancer mortality vs 7.8% cancer mortality, P=0.693). By the multivariate analyses, there is no significant difference in the prognosis between positive TgAb patients and negative TgAb patients (cancer recurrence, P=0.150 and cancer mortality, P=0.306).

Conclusion: Positive serum TgAb 1 year after total thyroidectomy may not influence the prognosis of papillary and follicular thyroid cancer patients in the study.