Anaplastic Carcinoma Management

The treatment of patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer—like the treatment of patients with papillary thyroid cancer—is controversial. The reason for the controversy is that anaplastic carcinoma is one of the most aggressive malignancies. Most patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer have poor prognosis regardless of treatment, and usually die of suffocation due to local tumor invasion; the median survival time is about 6 months (1,2) and the overall mortality rate is about 97% (1–3) . At initial examination, patients usually have a large (5–10 cm) fixed mass and about 30% already have distant, usually pulmonary, metastases (4) . These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.