Is BRAF Mutation Screening Useful for Preoperative Risk Stratification in Papillary Thyroid Cancer?

Abstract

Evaluation of: Xing M, Clark D, Guan H et al.: BRAF mutation testing of thyroid fine-needle aspiration biopsy specimens for preoperative risk stratification in papillary thyroid cancer. J. Clin. Oncol. 27(18), 2977–2982 (2009). Although the majority of patients with papillary thyroid cancer are effectively treated with thyroidectomy and selective use of postoperative 131I therapy, disease persistence/recurrence can afflict a proportion of patients after the initial treatments. BRAF mutations, present in a large proportion of papillary thyroid cancers, illustrate one of the most impressive examples of phenotype–genotype correlation in human pathology. In this study, the authors propose that preoperative BRAF mutation testing of fine-needle aspiration biopsy specimens provides a novel tool for a preoperative risk stratification strategy for predicting the extent of initial disease and subsequent clinical outcomes.