Prognosis of papillary thyroid carcinoma in elderly patients after thyroid resection: A retrospective cohort analysis

The size of the elderly population and the incidence of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) in this group appear to be rapidly increasing, although published information based on more detailed older age groupings are lacking. This study aimed to determine the clinical features and outcomes of elderly patients in PTC. All consecutive patients who received surgery for PTC in our Department from 1978 to 2014 were included. We compared 3 patient groups: young (<65 years), older (65–75 years), and very old patients (>75 years). Total thyroidectomy was performed with lymph node (LN) dissection in most cases, and radioiodine therapy was administered as needed. A total of 3835 patients (3257 young patients, 450 older patients, and 128 very old patients) were identified. Very old patients were more likely to have advanced (III/IV) tumor, nodes, metastases (TNM) stage, greater tumor size, number of tumors, and extracapsular invasion compared with young and older patients. For the 2289 patients with LN dissection (60%), metastatic LNs were more frequent in the very old group (44%) than in the other groups (34% young and 33% older patients) (P = 0.01). Very old patients had more frequent distant metastases (5%) than the older (2%) and young groups (1%) (P < 0.001). The overall postoperative morbidity was not significantly different between the 3 age groups. Recurrence was documented in 202 (6.2%) young, 29 (6.4%) older, and 15 (11.7%) very old PTC patients (P = 0.04). The 5-year disease-free survival was 81.3% for very old, 92.9% for older, and 94.7% for young group (P < 0.001). Very old patients should be considered high-risk PTC patients and their therapeutic strategy may benefit from aggressive treatment.