Endocrine Malignancies: Current Surgical Therapeutic Approaches
A special issue of Journal of Clinical Medicine (ISSN 2077-0383). This special issue belongs to the section "Endocrinology & Metabolism".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 October 2024 | Viewed by 2147
Special Issue Editors
Interests: general and colorectal surgery; laparoscopy; robotic surgery
Interests: general and colorectal surgery; laparoscopy; robotic surgery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common endocrine neoplasia and is known to have a favorable prognosis. Nevertheless, differentiated thyroid cancer has the potential to be metastatic and poorly differentiated thyroid cancer can present at an advanced clinical stage upon initial observation. This makes it difficult to assess the clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes after surgical intervention, and these patients subsequently have a low survival rate. Various diagnostic and treatment methodologies are currently being trialed to overcome these limitations and efforts are being made to improve both the patient's prognosis and outcome.
Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare endocrine malignancy and has a historically poor prognosis. Adjuvant therapy with mitotane, either alone or in combination with chemotherapy, is the standard of care treatment for ACC. Nevertheless, surgery remains the first line of curative treatment. Recently, several drugs targeting new pathways, such as insulin growth factor 2 (IGF2), beta-catenin pathway, and others, have entered clinical trials. Immunotherapy has also recently emerged as an important therapeutic option for several cancer models; however, the role of immunotherapy in the treatment cascade is not yet clear. Despite the recent advances in the development of novel treatment methods, ACC still has a poor prognosis.
This Special Issue encourages the submission of research articles which address how the pathophysiology of endocrine malignancy development drives both the current and novel emerging therapies that can be of benefit to patients, in addition to the refinement and advancement of surgical interventions. It is intended to present and discuss all the aspects of the currently available diagnostic and treatment methodologies, both surgical and non-surgical, of thyroid and adrenal malignancies via original research articles and reviews. For this Special Issue, we invite authors and researchers to publish original research and reviews highlighting the advancements in the diagnosis, prognosis, surgery, and therapeutics of endocrine malignancies, in particular, thyroid and adrenocortical cancer.
Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Thyroid cancer diagnosis and differentiation.
- Clinical management and surgical treatment of TC patients.
- Parathyroid pathologies: clinical and surgical management.
- Adrenocortical cancer diagnosis: genetic, clinical, and radiological findings.
- New pathways, targeted drugs, and immunotherapy for ACC patients.
- Clinical management and surgical treatment of ACC patients.
- Multiple endocrine neoplasia, genetic correlations, and therapeutic approaches.
Dr. Mariarita Tarallo
Prof. Dr. Enrico Fiori
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Clinical Medicine is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- endocrine malignancies
- thyroid cancer
- adrenocortical cancer
- parathyroid
- men
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: Incidence of thyroid cancer on retrosternal goiter
Abstract: Background: The role of surgical intervention in asymptomatic retrosternal multinodular goiters (MNGs) remains controversial. Whilst a non-operative approach is the standard of care for asymptomatic goiter in the absence of suspicious cytology, the preoperative diagnosis of thyroid cancer in retrosternal MNGs is challenging because of the difficulty in accessing and performing a fine-needle aspiration (FNA) in patients with thyroids that extend into the mediastinum. The rate of unexpected thyroid cancers found at the time of thyroidectomy varies widely, while the notion of increased cancer incidence in retrosternal goiters compared with cervical goiters is still controversial. Recent evidence from reviews suggests the prevalence of thyroid cancer is equivalent in patients with cervical and retrosternal MNGs, though data supporting this assessment is limited. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the prevalence of undiagnosed cancer found in patients undergoing a thyroidectomy for a cervical or substernal MNG. Patients with a preoperative diagnosis of multinodular goiter undergoing total thyroidectomy at an academic endocrine surgery referral center between January 2019 and October 2022 were reviewed and rates of cancer as detected on final pathology examination were compared between cervical and substernal MNGs. Results: We identified 411 patients who underwent thyroidectomy for MNG (114 with substernal MNGs and 297 with cervical MNGs) in the study interval period. Patients with substernal MNGs were older (58.2 vs. 50.8; p < 0.001) and more likely to be women (34 vs. 11.1 %; p < 0.001). Overall, thyroid cancer was found in 49.1% of cervical MNG specimens and in 35.8% of substernal MNG specimens (p = 0.02), while cancer >1 cm was found in 17.4 % of substernal MNG specimens and in 37.4% of cervical MNG specimens (p = 0.003); incidental microcarcinoma accounted for more than 50% of the cancers discovered at pathology in retrosternal MNGs; 61.5% of the carcinomas >1 cm found in retrosternal MNGs were unexpected (10% of all retrosternal MNGS). Conclusion: In this study the rate of postoperatively discovered thyroid cancer in patients with substernal MNGs was lower than that of patients with cervical MNGs, though still significant from a clinical standpoint, with one every ten patients having an unexpected differentiated cancer, non-microcarcinoma, found at pathology. Finding of unexpected thyroid cancer in retrosternal MNGs may be partially attributed to the difficulty in evaluating thyroid nodules and performing FNA of them in the mediastinum. Surgeons should counsel patients prior to surgery regarding the risk of unexpected thyroid cancer to set appropriate expectations of outcome.