Anaplastic carcinoma of thyroid gland account for no more than 10% of thyroid cancer,
but it shows extremely poor prognosis. The purpose of this study is to review the outcome
of patients with anaplastic carcinoma over the span of 5 years and to determine the patterns
of clinical presentation, age, sex and othre possible prognostic variables. We analyzed 30
cases of anaplastic carcinoma retrospectively from 1991. There were 14 men and 16 women.
There age ranged 33 to 75 years with a mean of 61.0 years. Sixteen patiens presented with
transformationqr of well differentiated carcinoma to anaplastic carcinoma, 1 iwth rapid
increase in the size of long standing goiter, 8 with rapidly growing neck mass and 4 with
metastatic disease. Twenty-eight patients(93.3%) showed cervical lymphnode metastasis at
presentation and twenty three patients (76.6%) showed laryngotracheal invation. Nine
patiens(30.3%) showed distant metastasis. Treatment modalities included surgical resection,
external irradiation, radioactive iodine and systemic chemotherapy. At decision making of
treatment plan, we considered completeness of initial surgery, uptake rate of whole body
radioactive iodine scan, locoregional progression and distant metastasis. The median survival
was 6.8 months and three cases survived beyond 12 months.
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