Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Papillary cancer accounts for 90 % of all thyroid cancers. Although this cancer has a good prognosis, some patients do not respond well to the conventional treatment (surgery and iodine radiation therapy).

Objective: The aim of this study is to identify predictive factors of persistent or refractory disease in papillary thyroid cancer.

Method: This is a retrospective study including 79 patients who underwent surgery for papillary cancer from January 2010 to December 2020, with a minimum follow-up period of 24 months. We divided them into two groups: The first group included patients with persistent or radioactive iodine (RAI) refractory disease, while the second group included disease-free patients. We conducted a statistical study in order to identify predictive factors of recurrence and refractory disease.

Results: Among our patients, 61 % were disease-free, 25, 6 % had persistent response and 12, 8 % had refractory response. Predictive factors of recurrent and RAI-refractory cancer were lateral lymph node dissection (P=0.049), multifocal cancer (P=0.003), nodal recurrence (P=0.032), thyroglobulin level (P=0.02) and cumulative doses of radioiodine (P=0.02). On multivariate study, nodal recurrence and thyroglobulin level were predictive factors of recurrence or refractory disease.

Conclusion: In our study, nodal recurrence and thyroglobulin level were identified as independent factors of recurrent or refractory disease. These findings can contribute to adapt treatment strategies and follow-up protocols among high-risk patients.