New therapeutic approaches for metastatic thyroid carcinoma.

Treatment of metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) includes the use of radioiodine and suppressive thyroid hormone treatment. A third of patients with distant metastases (who have radioiodine uptake, are younger than 40 years, have small metastases, and have well differentiated thyroid tumour) can be cured with radioiodine treatment. For other patients, there are no effective treatment modalities. However, the recent availability of molecularly targeted treatments has led to changes in the treatment strategy for DTC in patients with distant metastases, especially in those who are resistant to radioiodine treatment.