Survival Analysis of Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma With Various Therapeutic Modalities: Twenty-Seven Years’ Experience in a Single Cancer Center

Abstract

Background: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is the most aggressive thyroid gland malignancy. Several consensuses support the concept of multimodal therapy that combines surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy. However, patient’s comorbidity, poor performance status, and metastasis often make it impossible for patients to undergo multimodal therapy. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the survival analysis of ATC patients with different therapeutic modalities.

Methods: This study was a retrospective cohort study using data from the Cancer Registry in our institution. All patients with ATC who visited Prof Ngoerah Hospital between 1998 and 2024 were included in this study. Data regarding the survival duration of patients who received treatment modalities, and clinical data were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 with Kaplan-Meier and log-rank tests.

Results: Forty-two subjects with ATC were included in the analysis, of which 57.1% were female, with a mean age of 62.57 ± 13.42 years old. The median survival is 27.5 days. This study found no association between survival time and clinical characteristics of the patients (P > 0.05). This study found that patients who received combination therapy such as surgery + chemotherapy/radiotherapy (RT) had a longer survival time (64 days), compared to other patients who received surgery only (26 days), chemotherapy/RT only (49 days), or patients who died before receiving any therapy (19 days). However, the log-rank test showed that it was not statistically different (P > 0.05).

Conclusion: ATC survival rates have remained low, and aggressive strategies are still needed to improve the prognosis.

Keywords: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma; Survival; Therapeutic modalities