Predictive Value for Disease Progression of Serum Thyroglobulin Levels Measured in the Postoperative Period and After 131I Ablation Therapy in Patients with Differentiated

The aim of our study was to evaluate and compare in thyroid cancer patients the predictive value for disease progression of thyroglobulin (Tg) levels measured under thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) stimulation, in the postoperative period just before 131I ablative therapy and at the time of control 6–12 mo later. Methods: Two-hundred twelve consecutive patients treated for a well-differentiated thyroid carcinoma (184 papillary, 28 follicular) with no initial distant metastases were retrospec-tively studied. All patients had a total or near-total thyroidec-tomy followed by ablation with 3.7 GBq 131I. Tg levels were determined just before ablative therapy (Tg1) and 6–12 mo later (Tg2). Thresholds of 30 and 10 ng/mL were used for Tg1 and Tg2, respectively. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the predictive value for disease progres-sion of the 2 Tg determinations. Results: Thirty patients had