Optimal differentiated thyroid cancer management in the elderly

The incidence of differentiated thyroid cancer is increasing worldwide across all age groups. While most patients with differentiated thyroid cancer have a good prognosis, aggressive disease is more common in the elderly and disease-specific mortality is higher. Treatment options for differentiated thyroid cancer include surgery, levothyroxine, radioactive iodine, external beam radiotherapy and kinase inhibitors. Rational and evidence-based management is particularly important in older individuals because they may experience greater toxicities from the therapeutic options. We advocate an explicit risk?benefit analytic approach to thyroid cancer care that emphasises individual patient factors, likely disease biology and progression, and age-dependent treatment characteristics to ensure optimal treatment. In particular, this risk?benefit approach should seek to identify patients with aggressive disease, and, within a multidisciplinary setting, balance the likelihood of treatment success with the probability of treatment-related adverse effects.