Prognostic Significance of Somatic <i>RET</i> Oncogene Mutations in Sporadic Medullary Thyroid Cancer: A 10-Year Follow-Up Study

Abstract

We demonstrated that the presence of a somatic RET mutation correlates with a worse outcome of MTC patients, not only for the highest probability to have persistence of the disease, but also for a lower survival rate in a long-term follow up. More interestingly, the presence of a somatic RET mutation correlates with the presence of lymph node metastases at diagnosis, which is a known bad prognostic factor for the definitive cure of MTC patients.