Palliative surgery in locally advanced thyroid cancer

Abstract

The paper analyses the experience in palliative surgery in 137 patients with locally advanced forms of differentiated thyroid cancer. The paper describes the resections of the thyroid gland without the tumor tissue that germinated into the vital organs of neck or mediastinum. In some cases - the tumor was completely removed in patients with distant metastases. Such operations had to be performed in every fourth patient out of 464 patients with locally advanced carcinoma of the thyroid gland. Most of the patients undergoing palliative interventions, were elderly patients, that often had other illnesses. The need for such transactions occurred at the prospect of further treatment of patients with non-surgical methods, and serious complications of life-threatening tumors. In more than one in ten patients the palliative operation had to be completed with a temporary or permanent tracheostomy performed using the original method. The postoperative mortality rate was 4.3 % (6 cases). The causes of death were pulmonary embolism (2 patients), acute myocardial infarction (1 patient), purulent-septic complications (2 patients), acute cerebrovascular accident (1 case). The postoperative complications were: festering wounds (10 cases or 7.3 %), hypostatic pneumonia (21 patients or 15.3 %), bleeding (3 cases or 2.2 %). The 5-year survival rate after palliative surgery in patients with papillary cancer was higher compared to the group of patients with follicular carcinoma (43.0 % and 37.9 %, respectively). The same figures in patients with medullary carcinoma were significantly (p < 0.05) lower compared with those with papillary and follicular thyroid cancer and they amounted to 18.1 %. After the palliative surgery more than a third of patients survived for 5 years or more. That proves the validity of palliative interventions in this group of patients, and the relatively favorable current differentiated forms of thyroid cancer.