Exploration of systematic treatment strategies for anaplastic thyroid carcinoma: A single-institutional retrospective study

Abstract Purpose: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) has high invasiveness, poor clinical prognosis, and high mortality rates. The article aimed to pinpoint the treatment characteristics of ATC. Method: A retrospective analysis was conducted on 61 patients diagnosed with ATC at our institution from March 1, 2003 to September 30, 2022. All of them were diagnosed pathologically and their information regarding clinicopathologic characteristics, treatment strategy, and follow-up events was collected. The Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis. Then, the Cox proportional hazards model was used to calculate the univariate and multivariate analyses. Result: The study included 61 patients with ATC, ranging from 34 to 85 years old, with a median age of 66 in ATC. Half of (30/61, 49.2%) these patients’ tumor size was larger than 5cm. At the first prognosis, about 43/61 (70.5%) ATC patients accompanied acute symptomatic. 37 (60.7%) patients received chemotherapy, 11 (18%) patients treated with targeted therapy, and 9 (14.8%) ATC patients received immunotherapy. Surgery combines with chemotherapy could improve overall survival in ATC (P=0.003). 9 ATC patients who received targeted therapy based on surgery were able to increase their overall survival (P=0.025). Immunotherapy based on surgery was administered to 9 patients with ATC, statistical analysis also indicated beneficial (P=0.004). Conclusion: Patients with ATC can be benefited from a systematic regimen and immunotherapy may be a new therapeutic direction. The multimodality pattern of ATC with the aid of biomarkers warrants exploration.