PROGNOSTIC INDEX FOR THYROID-CARCINOMA - STUDY OF THE EORTC-THYROID-CANCER-COOPERATIVE-GROUP

Using survival from all causes of death as an endpoint, the prognostic significance of age, sex, cell type, clinical extent of tumor, lymph node status and number of metastatic sites (all recorded at the time of diagnosis) was studied in a set of data for 500 patients with histologically confirmed thyroid carcinoma. Each of these variables was found to have prognostic significance when examined singly, but some were strongly correlated with others. A simple prognostic index based on a multivariate analysis using a Weibull survival model is presented which allows one to assess the joint effects of the prognostic variables and indentifies patients with markedly different survival probabilities. The index may be used to predict survival for individual patients as an adjustment variable in treatment comparisons, or as a stratification variable in designing prospective randomized trials of treatment. © 1979.