Background: The BRAF(V600E) mutation has been adopted as a prognostic factor in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). However, it remains unclear whether routine BRAF mutation analysis is useful in establishing a prognosis for PTC patients. In the present study we investigated BRAF mutation analysis in a large number of PTC patients with long-term follow-up.
Patients and methods: We enrolled 766 patients from our hospital who underwent initial surgery for PTC without distant metastasis at diagnosis between 1996 and 2001, and whose BRAF mutation of primary lesions could be analyzed. The average age and follow-up period were 51 years and 130 months, respectively.
Results: To date, 77 (10 %) and 37 (5 %) patients have developed lymph node and distant recurrence, respectively, and 10 (1 %) have died of PTC. The BRAF mutation was positive in 281 patients (37 %), and it had no prognostic impact on lymph node recurrence-free (LNRFS) (p = 0.700), distant recurrence-free (DRFS) (p = 0.696), and cause-specific (CSS) (p = 0.125) survival in our entire series. However, CSS of BRAF mutation-positive high-risk patients based on AMES (p = 0.030), MACIS (score >6) (p = 0.017), the UICC stage (IVa) (p = 0.021), CIH classification (Sugitani et al. Surgery 135:139-148, 2004) (p = 0.015), and our own classification system (Ito et al. World J Surg 34:2570-2580, 2010) (p = 0.010) were significantly poorer than CSS of mutation-negative high-risk patients. The BFAF mutation did not affect CSS of non-high-risk patients, although the incidence of the BRAF mutation did not significantly differ between high-risk and non-high-risk groups based on these classification systems. The BRAF mutation was not related to LNRFS and DRFS in the subsets of high-risk and non-high-risk patients.
Conclusions: BRAF mutation analysis is useful in estimating the CSS of high-risk PTC patients based on the representative classification systems. It was not related to the prognosis in non-high-risk patients, at least those living in Japan.