Chemotherapy for Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer

Anaplastic carcinoma of the thyroid is one of the most aggressive human cancers, with a median survival of 4–6 mo after diagnosis. It is relatively resistant to chemotherapy alone. Shimaoka and associates ( 1 ) reported the response of anaplastic thyroid cancer to chemotherapy in a randomized trial conducted by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. Of the 39 patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer enrolled in the study, 21 were treated with doxorubicin alone, and 18 were treated with a combination of doxorubicin and cisplatin. Only one patient showed partial response to doxorubicin alone, compared to three complete responses and three partial responses in the combination arm. However, patients treated with combination chemotherapy did not have a statistically longer duration of response, nor of time to relapse. Investigators concluded that combination chemotherapy is superior to single-agent treatment in anaplastic carcinoma, with a higher response rate but no survival advantage. 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.