What is the prognosis for patients with well differentiated thyroid cancer?
There are dozens of studies reporting survival and prognosis in patients with thyroid cancer. In general patients with this disease have an excellent prognosis, although recurrence is not uncommon since patients survive for decades. In one retrospective report from Toronto that included analysis of over 300 patients, the recurrence rate was 15.6%. The overall and disease-specific survival at 10 years was 97.5% and 98.5%, respectively, and the overall and disease-specific survival at 20 years was 88.4% and 93.3%, respectively. See Prognostic Factors in Well-Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma. Laryngoscope. 2004 Dec;114(12):2110-2115. Similarly, patients with follicular variant of papillary thyroid cancer have the same excellent prognosis compared to patients with regular papillary thyroid cancer Classical and Follicular Variant of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma: A Comparative Study on Clinicopathologic Features and Long-term Outcome. World J Surg.
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