ABSTRACT
AIM: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC), poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma (PTDC) and lymphoma are aggressive forms of neoplasia. Although all carry a poor prognosis there is an important heterogeneity of overall survival (OS) between individual patients. The decision of total thyroidectomy is often based on fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) which has important limitations in this setting. Our aim was to assess the OS of aggressive thyroid cancer diagnosed on FNAB in a single university center. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed all the ATC, PDTC and lymphoma cases diagnosed on FNAB during 2007-2013 (15 cases). All FNAB examinations were performed by the same specialized pathologist. Data on demographics, laboratory tests, imaging studies, FNAB/pathology reports, treatment and survival time were recorded. All patients had serum calcitonin levels under 5 pg/mL. Five patients had total thyroidectomy. RESULTS: The OS was 2.2 (0.6, 18.5) months. The survival rate at 3 and 12 months was 46.6% and 33.3% respectively. There were no significant differences between ATC and PDTC/lymphoma patients for age, TSH, largest tumoral diameter and cervical lymph involvement. Patients with ATC (8 cases) had a median OS of 0.8 months, significantly shorter than 6 months for patients with PDTC/lymphoma (7 cases). Patients treated with total thyroidectomy had a median OS of 20 months compared with 1.87 months for patients without surgical intervention (p=0.06). CONCLUSIONS: The differences between groups and the heterogeneity of individual cases suggest that a diagnosis of aggressive thyroid cancer on FNAB should not preclude the surgical intervention. The decision to operate should be based on accurate imaging rather than on discouraging FNAB result.
