Metastatic Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma : Prognosis

Comments:
Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma - Impact of Nodal Metastases: The presence of regional nodal metastases clearly appears to have an adverse impact on survival in older patients; however, its impact on younger patients (< 45 yrs) is less clear or only minimal. Some studies have shown a statistically significant association between the number of involved lymph nodes and survival.

Extranodal extension of metastases significantly increases the risk of persistent/recurrent disease; however, its impact on disease-specific survival depends upon the clinical context, with the greatest adverse impact seen in BRAF-mutant tumors.