Vocational School of Justice
Novel approaches to thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment
The European Association of Nuclear Medicine, of which Prof. Dr. Cumali Aktolun, Faculty Member of Izmir University of Economics, Faculty of Medicine, is a member, published the newest version of the guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid cancer published by the American Thyroid Association (ATA) in 2015. Prof. Dr. Aktolun remarked, "Nobody was able to object to the guidelines of American Thyroid Association before. This is a great success for us."
The shortcomings, faults, and failures in the 2015 American Thyroid Association management guidelines for adult patients with thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer, has been determined by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine with a scientific article published in the journal Thyroid. Turkish Scientist Prof. Dr. Aktolun, Vice Chair (Founding Vice Chair) of the Thyroid Committee, European Association of Nuclear Medicine, which was established in 2014, has played a leading role in getting the article published.
European thyroid specialists published an article
Approximately 300 scientists, from both American Thyroid Association and European Association of Nuclear Medicine, met in Berlin. The task force went over the guidelines of ATA published in 2015, and identified the shortcomings, faults, and failures of the guidelines. American thyroid specialists has declined to change the points recommended by their European colleagues. Thereupon, Prof. Dr. Aktolun wrote an in-depth article covering the faults in the guidelines, and got his article published in November 2018 and contributed to the medical literature.
"Treatment of cancer specified in the old guidelines was much harder"
Prof. Dr. Aktolun pointed out the importance of the article published. The Professor said, “There has been a worldwide increase in thyroid cancer recently. The American Thyroid Association published guidelines in 2015 and asked for our approval. However, we rejected it strongly. There were some items in the guidelines like recommending minimally invasive thyroid surgeries, not focusing on screening tests, etc. that contradicted scientific researches completely. We were right to reject. Therefore, we took this very seriously. Nobody was able to object to the guidelines of American Thyroid Association before. This is a great success for us."