Survival time and "cure" in papillary and follicular thyroid carcinoma with distant metastases: statistics following University of Michigan therapy.

Between 1947 and 1980, 103 patients with well-differentiated thyroid carcinoma with metastases outside the neck were treated with sodium iodide (I-131) after surgical treatment. Forty-one patients had distant metastases first detected an average of 7.44 yr after the initial operation establishing the diagnosis of thyroid carcinoma. Follicular and papillary carcinomas gave the same survival time in patients, matched for age and sex, who had metastases outside the neck. Those considered to be free of their metastatic disease after I-131 therapy survived three times as long as those with persistent disease. Patients freed of their metastases had a higher conformity rate with half of our ten procedures of "ideal" treatment, compared with patients not freed of their metastases.