Differentiated thyroid carcinoma in the elderly: influence of age on disease-free and overall survival

Purpose We investigated whether age at diagnosis of differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) may be a risk factor for structural disease and mortality after primary treatment in aging patients. Methods A multicenter, retrospective analysis including patients older than 60 years at DCT diagnosis was designed. All subjects were treated by surgery with or without radioiodine adjuvant therapy and had a minimum follow-up of one year. We compared elderly patients (group 1, 60–74 years) with very old patients (group 2, ≥75 years). Results The study involved 1668 patients (74.3% women, median age 67 years, 87.6% papillary thyroid cancer, 73.3% treated with radioiodine), including 1397 in group 1 and 271 in group 2. Patients in group 2 had larger tumor size (1.8 [0.8–3.0] vs 1.5 [0.7–2.8] cm; P = 0.005), higher proportions of tumors with vascular invasion (23.8 vs 16.4%; P = 0.006), and lower proportion of lymphocytic thyroiditis (18.6 vs 24.9%; P = 0.013) than subjects in group 1. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that patients in group 2 had significantly lower structural disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) than patients in group 1 ( P = 0.035 and