Treatment
Unlike its differentiated counterparts, anaplastic thyroid cancer is highly unlikely to be curable either by surgery or by any other treatment modality, and is in fact usually unresectable due to its high propensity for invading surrounding tissues.
Palliative treatment consists of radiation therapy usually combined with chemotherapy.
However, with today's technology, new drugs, such as fosbretabulin (a type of combretastatin), bortezomib and TNF-Related Apoptosis Induced Ligand (TRAIL), are being introduced and trialed in clinical labs and human clinical studies. Based on encouraging Phase I and II clinical trial results, with fosbretabulin, a type of drug that selectively destroys tumor blood vessels, a large, multi-national clinical trial is being undertaken to determine whether the drug can extend the survival of patients with ATC. Recent studies in Italy have shown positive results against ATC, but more tests outside the lab are needed to confirm this before it can be used in chemotherapy. There have been some case studies where patients with aggressive thyroid cancer have survived outside the mean expected survival time.
Read more about this topic: Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)