CURRENT CAPABILITIES AND PROSPECTS OF CHEMORADIOTHERAPY FOR MEDULLARY THYROID CANCER (A LITERATURE REVIEW)

Medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is characterized by the most aggressive course among differentiated thyroid carcinomas and is accompanied by early and extensive metastasis. Up to 60 % of patients with MTC already have disseminated forms of the disease (stage III– IV) by the moment of diagnosis. Overall five-year and ten-year survival of patients with MTC is 85–89 and 73–75 %, respectively, whereas five-year survival rate in patients with stage III–IV MTC is significantly lower and does not exceed 5–10 %. Therefore, treatment of disseminated forms of MTC is an extremely important problem in clinical oncology. The article gives an overview of Russian and foreign publications on the effectiveness of radiation and drug therapy for generalized MTC. Particular attention is paid to modern promising treatment strategies used for this category of patients, such as radionuclide therapy of bone metastases and targeted therapy with tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

medullary thyroid cancer, distant metastases, radiation and drug therapy