Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer

Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer (ATC) is a form of thyroid cancer which

has a very poor prognosis due to its aggresive behavior and
resistance to cancer treatment. ATC is most series has a median
survival of a few months from the time of diagnosis with rare long
term survival .
ATC are the least common (only 1% of thyroid cancer). It occurs
most often in older age. It usually rapidly enlarge, hard and fixed
thyroid mass with increasing mass effect within neck and or
thoracic inlet. Gross local tumor invasion into adjacent structure
and 25%-50% and metastasize extensively to distant organ such
as lung (25-50%) commonly found and the overall cure rate is
very low.
Thyroidectomy
or
surgical
debulking
are
frequently
contraindicated. It can be consider in age less than 60 year old,
intrathyroidal anaplastic cancer. In this case thyroidectomy
combined with external beam radiotherapy were found lower
mortality rate.
Rupture of tumor mass may occur during the operation and lead
to massive spread of tumor.
Many patients especially those who have advanced cancer and
can not undergo surgical resection will benefit from external beam
radiation and chemotherapy with or without thyroidectomy for
palliative local control in ATC.