Surgery combined with adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy prolonged overall survival in stage IVC anaplastic thyroid cancer: a SEER-based analysis

Background Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is a rare but aggressive malignancy, which accounts for only 1–2% of all thyroid cancers.

The median overall survival (OS) time for all stages patients is at about 5 months.

The benefit of surgery combined with adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy in stage IVC anaplastic thyroid cancer is still controversial.

The aim of this study is to investigating surgery combined with adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy and survival outcomes in stage IVC ATC patients.

Method Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database from 2004 to 2016 were used to conduct a cross-sectional study in the analysis.

The endpoint of this study was overall survival.

Results The median OS of the overall population was 2.0 months.

Multivariate analysis showed that age (<67 vs. ≥67 years old, P  = 0.017, HR = 1.355, 95% CI: 1.057–1.738), tumor size (<7 cm vs. ≥7 cm, P  = 0.001, HR = 1.579, 95% CI: 1.202–2.073), Surgery (thyroidectomy vs. non-surgery, P  < 0.001, HR = 0.554, 95% CI: 0.401–0.766), radiation therapy ( P  < 0.001, HR = 0.571, 95% CI: 0.445–0.733) and chemotherapy ( P  = 0.003, HR = 0.684, 95% CI: 0.531–0.881) were independent prognostic factor for worse OS in stage IVC ATC patients.

Surgery combined with adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy exhibited the better overall survival time for 4 months.

Conclusions Surgery combined with adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy can improve overall survival in stage IVC ATC patients.

We recommend surgical approach with fully evaluation combined with radiation therapy and chemotherapy for selected stage IVC ATC patients.