Differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) is a common endocrine malignancy whose incidence has been increasing over the past decades. Further, disease recurrence rates as high as 35% have been reported after 40 years of follow-up.

Pelttari et al. carried out a study that aimed to identify factors that predict recurrence after long term follow-up. They assessed recurrences and cancer-specific deaths in a cohort of 495 patients with DTC, initially treated with both surgery and radioactive iodine remnant ablation after a median follow-up of 16 years. They studied possible prognostic factors for disease recurrence in this cohort including post surgical and post ablative serum thyroglobulin concentrations.

The results of this study showed that the recurrence rate in their cohort to be 10.3% after a median follow-up of 16 years. They also found that post-ablative serum thyroglobulin and local infiltration at primary surgery to be the only independent predictors of recurrence. They therefore conclude that post-ablative thyroglobulin concentration is a strong predictor of disease recurrence in DTC. Pelttari et al. (2010) European Journal of Endocrinology, in press.

Read the full article at DOI: 10.1530/EJE-10-0553.