Thyroid carcinoma (cancer) has a favorable prognosis.
Once they have had surgery and been treated with radioactive iodine, only a very few patients die from this disease. There is, however, always the risk the disease will recur sometime during the patient’s life. Until now this has meant that a patient could never be considered to be cured. In his doctoral dissertation, Erik Verburg describes three important conclusions. A diagnostic scan with a low dose of radioactive iodine before treatment with a large dose reduces by half the chance that the treatment will be successful.
- that a successful ablation means a favorable prognosis; if the first treatment is successful, after five years a patient can be considered to be cured.
- that in nearly 10 percent of patients, heterophile antibodies influence the measurement of the tumor marker thyreoglobulin to such an extent that the treatment has to be modified.
Erik Verburg will receive his PhD from UMC Utrecht on October 30. The title of his dissertation is “Clinical studies on treatment and follow-up in differentiated thyroid carcinoma.”