Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENDOCRINE ONCOLOGY
Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 145-151Publisher
FUTURE MEDICINE LTD
DOI: 10.2217/IJE.14.24
Keywords
beneficence; distributive justice; TKI; tyrosine kinase inhibitor
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Protein kinase inhibitors (PKIs) have emerged as highly promising therapies in progressive metastatic radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer and in medullary thyroid cancer; two were recently approved in the USA for use in medullary thyroid cancer (vandetanib, cabozantinib), and another for use in progressive metastatic radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer (sorafenib). Although more than 90% of thyroid cancer patients fare well in response to conventional treatment, PKI therapy has the potential to provide benefit. Nonetheless, PKIs produce numerous side effects, may worsen quality of life, may hasten mortality (by 1-2%), require discerning clinical acumen, are not yet proven to improve thyroid cancer survival and are very costly. This raises questions about who should prescribe PKIs, and about whether their use in thyroid cancer is truly beneficent and ethically justified. Restraint should be exercised in their use in thyroid cancer, with potential risks and benefits carefully weighed and solutions devised to help ameliorate many of the problems associated with their use.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available