Background and objectives: Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have provided excellent clinical benefits to patients with advanced differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC): however, the tumor status for which maximum efficacy can be obtained remains controversial. We conducted this study to identify effective clinical predictors, focusing on disease progression.
Methods: Using the data of 42 DTC patients treated with lenvatinib, we investigated the clinical factors related to overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), and conducted analyses by the scoring of the factors.
Results: The 3 year OS and median PFS were 51% and 13.8 months, respectively. Univariate analysis identified performance status (PS), tumor-related symptoms, and tumor diameter as the only factors affecting both these outcomes. Giving 1-point for each of these three factors, a higher score was significantly related to shorter OS and PFS. Patients with two or fewer points (n = 34) had better median OS (NR vs 3.9 months, p < 0.001) and PFS (15.7 vs 2.1 months, p < 0.001) than patients with three points (n = 8). Patients with all three factors had a significantly worse prognosis than patients with two or fewer factors.
Conclusion: DTC patients with all three indicators are unlikely to have longer survival. Therefore, it is important to commence TKIs before disease progression.
Keywords: Lenvatinib; Overall survival; Performance status; Thyroid carcinoma; Tyrosine kinase inhibitor.
© 2022. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.