Standard therapy for thyroid cancer in children involves surgical resection followed by radioactive iodine therapy in patients with invasive differentiated thyroid carcinoma.
Systemic chemotherapy has emerged as an option for care in adult patients, including tyrosine kinase inhibitors and oncogene-specific targeted therapy. There is an opportunity to incorporate these oral agents into clinical practice for pediatric patients with refractory, anatomically progressive disease after standard therapy has failed. There is also an opportunity for a paradigm shift where medical therapy with prior to surgery (neoadjuvant therapy) may maintain low-disease specific mortality and optimize outcome by reducing treatment-associated complications for patients that present with morbidly invasive disease at diagnosis.
This webinar reviews if and when these medications may be considered in caring for pediatric patients with advanced thyroid cancer and explores very rare tumors and developmental and advanced pediatric thyroid cancer therapeutics.
Related Centers and Programs: Pediatric Thyroid Center