[Individualization of treatment in sporadic and hereditary medullary thyroid cancer]. / Therapieindividualisierung beim sporadischen und hereditären medullären Schilddrüsenkarzinom.

BACKGROUND: Routine preoperative assessment of the tumor marker calcitonin for medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) and the generally improved diagnostics with high-resolution ultrasound, elastography and Doppler function as well as functional imaging, enable the earlier detection of organ-limited, non-metastasized MTC. Thereby, a new treatment option arises for surgical de-escalation in sporadic MTC, moving from routine thyroidectomy with bilateral central lymph node dissection towards unilateral thyroidectomy with ipsilateral central lymph node dissection. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A search was carried out in PubMed for surgical approaches and selection of publications with results from limited resection in sporadic MTC. RESULTS: In selected patient cohorts limited resection surgery can achieve adequate oncological results but requires long-term follow-up. DISCUSSION: When sporadic unifocal primary tumors are identified and intraoperative frozen section pathological investigation is consistently employed for assessing the grade of desmoplasia and breach of the tumor capsule, the extent of resection can be intraoperatively adapted. Pivotal prerequisites for this personalized concept include consideration of preoperative clinical criteria and intraoperative surgical assessment in conjunction with the intraoperative frozen section examination in order to achieve an adequate oncological tumor resection and a biochemical cure.

NMR-based metabolomics to select a surgical method for treating papillary thyroid carcinoma

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate differences in the metabolomic profiles of patients who received different surgeries for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). METHODS: Two surgical methods, i.e., unilateral and total thyroidectomy, were employed according to different disease conditions. Sera from patients who were treated with levothyroxine sodium tablets before and after surgery was analyzed with a Bruker 500 Hz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer. Data were analyzed via principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminate analysis (PLS-DA) with SIMCA-P+ 11.0 software, and metabolites were obtained and compared. The first and second principal components were selected from PCA, PLS-DA, and orthogonal partial least squares discriminate analysis (OPLS-DA). A p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: There were significant differences in serum metabolomics before and after surgery. Compared with unilateral thyroidectomy, total thyroidectomy reversed some highly increased metabolite levels (e.g., taurine and betaine). More significant variations in abnormal metabolites were noted after total thyroidectomy than after unilateral thyroidectomy (e.g., alanine, choline, hippurate, and formic acid). CONCLUSIONS: The choice of surgical method for PTC patients should be based not only on the tumor condition but also on the potential consequences of metabolic variations. Total thyroidectomy reversed some increased metabolite levels but led to accumulation of some other metabolites due to the loss of thyroid function; thus, metabolic disturbances caused by thyroid hormone deficiency should be prevented in advance.