Quality of Life After Interventional Thyroid Treatment

Patients are frequently dissatisfied with LT4 replacement treatment. The reasons for persisting patient complaints are poorly understood. Conversion efficiency and impaired T3/T4 ratios in athyreotic patients may play a major role. We hypothesised that the extent of ablation either by surgery or radioiodine treatment may result in biochemical disequilibria between FT3, FT4 and TSH and those may be, in turn, associated with persisting symptomatology.

The study follows patients after radioiodine therapy as well as a control group over half a year, assessing thyroid status, set points, conversion rates, thyroid volume, LT4 administration and dosing, demographic characteristics and quality of life measures. The treatment mode is not part of the study, and determined by criteria and procedures of best standard care. For that reason, a randomised or blinded design is not possible.

Changes and interrelationships between thyroid parameters and QoL measures are analysed within-subjects and between treatment groups.

Inclusion criteria

• Clinical diagnosis of a thyroid disease requiring radioiodine treatment
• Clinical diagnosis of a thyroid disease requiring follow-up but no ablative treatment (controls)
• Clinical diagnosis of a thyroid disease requiring surgery stopped recruiting

Exclusion criteria

• paediatric patients
• interfering comorbidity
• non-thyroidal illness
• pregnancy
• psychiatric disease
• severe psychological disorder
• lack of consent