Anaplastic form of thyroid cancer
The anaplastic thyroid carcinoma is undifferentiated in contrast to the papillary carcinoma, its cells are only slightly similar to those of the healthy thyroid gland. Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma has the worst prognosis of all thyroid cancers, but is relatively rare with 1-2% of all cases. They grow strongly infiltrating (ingrowing into neighboring organs) and aggressively.
They often grow into neighboring structures such as the recurrens nerve, adjacent muscles, the trachea or esophagus, so that symptoms of thyroid cancer such as hoarseness or shortness of breath can occur. At diagnosis, half of the patients already have metastases. In thyroid carcinoma, these are mainly located in the lungs, bones and brain and are prognostically unfavorable.
As in papillary thyroid carcinoma, the thyroid gland and surrounding lymph nodes are completely removed. Afterwards (in other cases even before surgery), the patients are treated with chemotherapy and irradiated. This is known as a multimodal therapy concept.
The promising radioiodine therapy, which is used for other forms of thyroid cancer, cannot be used here. The cancer cells of the anaplastic form have degenerated to such an extent that they can no longer absorb iodine, so radioiodine therapy has no effect. The anaplastic thyroid carcinoma has a mean survival time of about 4 to 12 months, depending on how advanced the cancer is at diagnosis.
