Spontaneous Slowing and Regressing of Tumor Growth in Childhood/Adolescent Papillary Thyroid Carcinomas Suggested by the Postoperative Thyroglobulin-Doubling Time

Table 1

Clinical and biochemical features of the 14 childhood or adolescent patients with papillary thyroid carcinomas.

Clinical and biochemical features	Values
Age, yrs	16.5 (7–18)
Tumor size, mm	24 (13–46)
pN0/N1a/N1b	2/1/11
Extrathyroid extension: no/minimal/massive	5/8/1
Thyroid ablation (≥30 mCi)	2 cases
Whole body scintigraphy (≤13 mCi)	3 cases
Follow-up period, yrs	8.4 (3.5–15.8)
Lymph node recurrence	5 cases
Number of Tg measurements	6.5 (4–12)
Tg-DT, yrs	8.3 (−4.5–147)
1/Tg-DT	0.12 (−0.29–0.51)
hTV-DT, yrs	0.5 (0.3–0.6)
1/hTV-DT	1.99 (1.68–4.01)

Values are median (ranges) and numbers of cases, Tg: thyroglobulin, Tg-DT: thyroglobulin-doubling time, and hTV-DT: hypothetical tumor volume-doubling time. Note that 1/Tg-DT was significantly smaller than 1/hTV-DT ().