Thyroid carcinoma.

Introduction/Background Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy in the United States, where the annual incidence is approximately 37,000 and increasing due to the more frequent diagnosis of early well-differentiated thyroid carcinoma (WDTC) [1]. Annually, approximately 1,600 people die from thyroid malignancies [2]. Women represent approximately 75% of newly diagnosed thyroid carcinoma cases. Risk factors for thyroid cancer include exposure to ionizing radiation and a family history of the disease [3,4]. Thyroid cancer spans a spectrum of disease entities from the often curable, well-differentiated histologies (papillary, follicular/Hürthle cell, and medullary) to the aggressive anaplastic histology that represents only 2% of all thyroid cancer cases but 50% of thyroid cancer-related deaths. Guidelines for the management of thyroid carcinoma have been promulgated and are widely used [5,6]. The overwhelming majority of patients with WDTC will do well with appropriate treatment. The high long-term survivorship and relative rarity of the disease have frustrated efforts to execute randomized trials, so management recommendations are not guided by conventional modern standards in oncology.