Outcome of Treatment for Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma—a Single Centre Experience

We conducted this study to evaluate the demography, clinical presentation, management and outcomes of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) from the Indian context. This was a retrospective study of patients with MTC managed between January 2008 and December 2016. All pertinent data was collected and the results were analysed using STATA (v.13.1). MTC accounted for 90/2022 (4.45%) patients managed with thyroid cancer during the study period. The mean age of presentation was 40 years (range 14–70 years) with 47 males and 43 females. The most common presentation included goitre with cervical lymphadenopathy seen in 60 patients (66.7%). There were 11 patients (12.2%) with systemic metastasis at presentation. Rearranged during transfection (RET) testing was performed in 71 patients and was positive in 25 (35.2%). The mutations among these patients were seen in the following codons: 634 (12), 804 (8), 790 (3) and 618 (2). Persistent hypercalcitoninemia (calcitonin > 50 pg/ml) was observed in 62/80 (77.5%) patients. Forty patients underwent a meta-iodo-benzyl-guanidine (MIBG) scan in the postoperative period, 10 were positive. The mean duration of follow-up was 32 months and 10 patients defaulted from follow-up. Sixteen patients developed metastasis during the period of follow-up while eight patients expired. The mean survival was 85.75 months (95% CI 78.7–92.7). MTC accounted for 4.5% of thyroid carcinomas in this cohort among which 35% were hereditary. Persistent hypercalcitoninemia following surgery is seen in more than 70% of patients but this does not affect survival. RET screening should be performed for all patients with MTC as curative surgery can be offered for mutation positive offspring.