Endocrine Abstracts

Parafollicular C-Cells represent 1% of thyroid cells and differ from follicular cells for their origin from the neural crest. At variance with follicular cells, their growth and function are independent from thyrotropin stimulating hormone (TSH), they do not take up iodine and they produce and secrete calcitonin (CT) but not thyroglobulin. C-Cell Hyperplasia (CCH) is defined as an increased number of normal C-cells (i.e. 50 or more C-cells in at least one low-power field (100&...

Introduction: medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a neuroendocrine thyroidal cancer. World Health Organization recognizes a grading system for almost all neuroendocrine tumors; however, a shared grading system for MTC is still lacking. We performed a clinical and pathological review of 257 MTCs to evaluate which histologic features have an impact on the disease specific survival and to propose a new grading system.Method: We retrospectively reviewed cli...

Background: Vandetanib and Cabozantinib are the only two multitarget tyrosine kinase inhibitors approved for the management of metastatic and progressive medullary thyroid cancer. (MTC) Despite their efficacy in terms of progression free survival prolongation and overall response rate, the drug-related toxicity is still a clinical problem, impairing patient’s quality of life and the compliance to the treatment. We retrospectively evaluate the adverse events (AEs) occurred...

Background: Cervical lymph node metastases at histology are common findings in differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC); however, their impact on clinical outcome is debated.Material and method: 1332 DTC patients, performed the first 131 I treatment between January 2010 and September 2012 and were divided into 2 groups: absence (Nx/N0) or presence (N1) of lymph node metastases at histology. The latter group was further split in central compartment ...

Background: Serum calcitonin (CT) is a very sensitive test for the diagnosis of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). However, its routine dosage in patients with nodular thyroid disease is not recommended by all scientific societies. In addition, to optimize costs, it is only suggested in the case of suspicious nodules on ultrasound, indeterminate nodules at cytology or nodular goiter before surgery. The aim of the study is to evaluate the serum CT in a series of consecutive MTC...

Objectives: The majority of patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (TC) have an excellent prognosis, with a 5-year survival rate of 98.3%, and only rarely reaches an advanced stage of disease. The present study aims to identify the clinicopathological and epidemiological features at the time of diagnosis of a group of patients who required to be treated with systemic therapy with tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKI).Methods: We retrospectively evalua...

Objectives: Distant metastases in MTC adversely affect disease prognosis. Somatic mutations in spMTC as well as Variant Allele Frequency (VAF) have been related to tumor burden, disease course and the response to TKIs. The aim of this study is to report three cases of nucleotide (nt) insertions/deletions (indels) in the RET oncogene in relation to disease course/response to TKIs.Methods: Of 195 spMTC patients followed-up in Dept. Clinical Therap...

Introduction: MTC is a rare neuroendocrine tumor arising from thyroid parafollicular cells. After initial treatment, patients should be divided according to their clinical status in cured, biochemical persistence (BIO) and structural persistence (STR) of the disease. Concerning BIO patients less is known about the structural disease appearance rate and the time elapsed between the first evaluation after surgery and the appearance of structural disease.Me...

Background: Since 2006 according to the European consensus for the management of patients with DTC, in tumors ≤ 1 cm, treatment with thyroidectomy alone without 131I treatment was suggested. Therefore, in our institution, we applied this suggestion in clinical practice, although prospective studies were not still available. Aim of this study is to evaluate the rate of the events occurring in a medium-long term follow-up.Patients and Meth...

Aims: Surgery is the only curative treatment for medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) patients and the gold standard practice is still represented by total thyroidectomy and prophylactic central neck compartment lymphnode dissection. As it happened for differentiated thyroid cancer, in the last years some authors proposed less aggressive and extent surgical modality as hemithyroidectomy and ipsilateral neck compartment dissection in unilateral and solitary sporadic MTC cases. Few st...