To give or not to give? A critical appraisal of a clinical trial on radioiodine treatment

Abstract

Recently , Leboulleux et al. published the results of the ESTIMABL 2 trial [1]. It is an open-label, randomised, phase III trial using a noninferiority comparison design. In this study, included patients were at the lowest-risk end of the low-risk spectrum of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) treated with total thyroidectomy with or without lymph node dissection. Patients were randomised to receive low-dose postoperative radioiodine therapy (RAI) with 1.1 GBq in one group and follow-up without RAI in the second group. We congratulate the authors for this work, representing one of the few randomised trials available in the field. However, we would point out some potential limitations that need to be considered before translating these results to generalised clinical recommendations.