The Benefit of Trimodal Therapy for Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer
According to a retrospective study, an intensive trimodal therapy regimen showed a statistically significant improvement of overall survival among patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC), compared with those who received less intense therapy.
This study included 3460 patients with ATC sorted into 3 cohorts by number of treatment modalities they underwent, with the modalities including surgery, radiation, and systemic therapy. The overall survival (OS) was compared between the 3 groups. There were 1472 patients who received 1 type of therapy or no therapy, 1092 who received bimodal therapy, and 896 who received trimodal therapy. Upon propensity score matching, there were 896 patients in each cohort.
The median OS of the trimodal cohort was 9.1 months, compared to 1.7 months in the no therapy/1 mode cohort and 4.9 months in the bimodal therapy cohort. This was a statistically significant improvement in OS for the trimodal group when compared to either of the other cohort (all comparisons, P < .001). When cohorts were split by metastatic status, this same trend was seen in the subgroup analysis. Further modality-specific analyses found that surgery, radiation, and systemic therapy each independently prolonged OS among patients with M0 and M1 disease, which study authors noted, “explain the additive advantaged of trimodal therapy and underscore that offering at least one evidence-based modality is preferable when comprehensive treatment is infeasible.”
In conclusion, study authors stated that despite the limitations of this being a retrospective study, the results “showed the critical role of an intensive therapy approach in this aggressive malignancy.”
Source:
Alhayek B, Baidoun F, Hadidi D, et al. Impact of intensive multimodal treatment on the outcomes of patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer. Am J Clin Oncol. Published August 7, 2025. doi:10.1097/COC.0000000000001246
