Treatment
Extensive surgery can be effective when the condition is detected early, but a risk for recurrence remains. About half of patients have metastasis to regional lymph nodes at the time of diagnosis.
Unlike other differentiated thyroid carcinoma, there is no role for radioiodine treatment in medullary-type disease.
External beam radiotherapy should be considered for patients at high risk of regional recurrence, even after optimum surgical treatment. A retrospective study in 1996 found that external beam radiation was beneficial in some patients.
Read more about this topic: Medullary Thyroid Cancer
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