De-escalation strategies in differentiated thyroid cancer

Thyroid cancer runs the gamut from indolent micropapillary carcinoma to highly aggressive metastatic disease. Today, using prognostic algorithms, treatment and follow-up can be tailored to each patient in order to decrease overtreatment and over-medicalization of indolent disease. Active surveillance of papillary thyroid carcinoma less than 1 cm avoids surgery and thyroid hormone replacement in a large proportion of patient whose tumors remain stable for years. Total thyroidectomy, once a dogma in the treatment of all thyroid cancer, is being supplanted by thyroid lobectomy for low-risk cancers, thereby decreasing the surgical risks involved and improving patients’ quality of life. Indications for prophylactic central neck dissection, once mandatory, are now being adapted to the risk of cancer recurrence. Radioactive iodine therapy, also previously mandatory for all, is now only employed according to risk factors and expected outcomes. Follow-up is also being tailored to risk factors for recurrence, with less frequent visits and less use of ultrasound and scintigraphy. For more advanced disease, molecular therapies tailored to somatic mutations are opening opportunities for redifferentiation of aggressive tumors which become amenable to radioactive iodine therapy which carries fewer side effects than other systemic therapies. These advances in the management of thyroid cancer with a personalized approach and de-escalation of treatment and follow-up are improving the way we treat thyroid cancer, avoiding overtreatment and improving patients’ quality of life.