THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTRAOPERATIVE PHOTODYNAMIC THERAPY IN ANAPLASTIC THYROID CANCER COMBINED TREATMENT

Abstract

Anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is an extremely rare and deadly malignant tumor of human. Most of patients die within 1 year after diagnosis, the average life expectancy is 3-5 months. The authors analyzed 279 ATC cases, identified in the clinics of St-Petersburg center of endocrine surgery and oncology. The age of patients varied from 47 to 93 years old, the average age was 69,9±8,34 years. Most of them were females: 239 (85,7%). The ratio of men to women was 1:6. Surgical and conservative symptomatic therapies were used for treatment of ATC. Part of patients underwent radiotherapy. With the purpose of surgical treatment efficiency increase the method of intraoperative photodynamic therapy (IPDT) was developed, and was used in 24 (8.6%) cases between 2012 and 2015. 178 (63,8%) patients underwent only surgery. Multimodal therapy, consisting of surgery and radiotherapy, received 51 (18.3%) patients. In 7 (2,5%) cases used only radiotherapy. In 19 (6,8%) cases used conservative symptomatic therapy, because patients refused from active treatment. The effectiveness of a new method of therapy was assessed by compared the survival in patients who received surgery with IPDT and received only surgery. The survival of first group patients was better than the survival of second group patients: the average survival 4.2 months and 2.7 months. However, there are no statistically significant difference (p>0,05).