Older patients with differentiated thyroid cancer exhibit more aggressive pathological characteristics than younger patients

Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) has long been recognized as having a worse prognosis in older people. We retrospectively evaluated the clinical and pathological characteristics of 973 sequentially treated patients with primary DTC stratified into 2 age groups, >= 55 or < 55 years, based on the current American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) DTC staging system. We found that older patients had a higher frequency of extrathyroidal cancer extension and larger cancers, and that their cancers were less commonly completely resectable.