Multimodal therapy in anaplastic giant cell thyroid carcinoma

A therapy aiming at pre‐ and postoperative radiotherapy with concomitant chemotherapy has been used in 19 patients with anaplastic giant cell carcinoma of the thyroid gland. Radiotherapy was administered twice daily, 5 days a week; the cytostatic drugs employed were bleomycin, cyclophosphamide, and 5‐fluorouracil. Patients with advanced disease (distant metastases and/or vocal cord paralysis,n= 9) had a median survival time from diagnosis of 7 months, while patients with less advanced disease survived on average 12 months. In the latter group there were 3 survivors. The patients who died succumbed to metastatic disease rather than to local growth. No patient required tracheostomy and the side effects due to treatment were usually well tolerated.