Background
There is an ongoing debate about the aggressiveness of thyroid cancer associated with Graves’ disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the recurrence of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) in patients with Graves’ disease, compared with matched control patients.
Methods
From January 2006 to June 2014, 3,628 patients underwent total thyroidectomy for PTC. Of those, 114 patients had Graves’ disease with non-occult PTC (GD group). Recurrence rates were analyzed between GD group and 1:5 matched euthyroid patients (control group), after propensity score matching according to age, gender, and pathological features including tumor size, extrathyroidal extension, resection margin involvement and lymph node metastasis.
Results
The matched cohorts did not differ in age, gender, body mass index, pathologic features. Recurrence was found in 1 patient (0.9%) in the GD group after median follow-up of 94.1 months, whereas 6 patients (1.6%) experienced recurrences in the control group. No difference was found on 5-year recurrence-free survival between GD group and control group (100% vs. 98.4%, P = 0.572). The Cox proportional hazard analysis indicated that only age was a prognostic factor for predicting disease-free survival (hazard ratio 0.898, 95% CI 0.832-0.969, P = 0.006).
Conclusions
Our data suggest that Graves’ disease does not affect the prognosis of papillary thyroid carcinoma. Papillary thyroid cancers in patients with Graves' disease showed an excellent prognosis and comparable disease-free survival than those with euthyroid states