One step closer to the end of postoperative radioactive iodine thyroid remnant ablation

Abstract

According to various guidelines and consensus papers, postoperative radioiodine therapy can be prescribed to patients with differentiated thyroid cancer to achieve one of three goals: ablation of essentially healthy thyroid remnant tissue, adjuvant treatment, or treatment of known disease. Each of these goals is associated with different radioactive iodine (131I) activities.1,2 Of these, remnant ablation has been the subject of intense scientific discussion, but the debate has been hampered by the lack of high-quality, prospective, randomised trials. However, with the ESTIMABL2 trial3 and the IoN trial,4 this lack of high-quality evidence is now in the process of being eliminated.