2021 American Thyroid Association Guidelines for Management of Patients with Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer
- Study type
- Clinical guideline
- Study name
- ATA ATC 2021
- Design
- Evidence-based clinical practice guideline (literature review with grading of evidence using the American College of Physicians guideline grading system)
- Source
- Thyroid® · 2021
In plain words
Anaplastic thyroid cancer is a rare type of thyroid cancer that is very aggressive. This guideline was written by the American Thyroid Association to help doctors and patients make decisions about diagnosis, treatment, palliative care and follow-up. Each patient should have a treatment plan that fits their own situation, so talk about the treatment options with your care team.
Key points
Study population
Patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC), a rare but highly lethal form of thyroid cancer. This guideline was developed to inform clinicians, patients and researchers.
Endpoints
This is not a clinical trial and has no endpoint. The guideline topics include diagnosis, initial evaluation, establishment of treatment goals, approach to locoregional disease (surgery, radiotherapy, targeted/systemic therapy, supportive care during active treatment), approach to advanced/metastatic disease, palliative care options, surveillance and long-term monitoring, and ethical issues including end of life.
Safety and side effects
According to the abstract, this guideline reports no adverse event data. Safety details of each treatment are given in the full guideline.
Clinical significance and place in guidelines
This guideline is an update of the 2012 American Thyroid Association guideline and provides 31 recommendations and 16 good practice statements across all phases of ATC management, from diagnosis to palliative care and end-of-life ethical issues. The abstract does not give the details of the recommendations, and the full text should be consulted for clinical implementation. Its adoption in other guidelines should be checked separately.
Limitations
The abstract does not give the text or level of evidence of each recommendation; these must be taken from the full guideline. The authors emphasise that all care should be individualised. An erratum to this guideline was published in Thyroid, October 2021.
This summary was prepared by the editorial team from the published paper; the original paper is the final reference. Read the original abstract on PubMed.