Radioactive Iodine Therapy of Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma: Redesigning the Paradigm.

Radioactive iodine therapy has evolved over the past 70 years from treatment of known metastatic thyroid carcinoma to include adjuvant use to decrease the incidence of recurrent disease and to ablation of normal remnant tissue following thyroidectomy, even for minimal tumor involvement. Advances in laboratory testing, development of drugs useful in radioiodine treatment, as well as advances in radiation detection and imaging instrumentation, have progressively improved the utility of radioiodine therapy of differentiated thyroid carcinoma. Guidelines have proliferated and they have become more detailed and complex. This trend is likely to continue as the science and technology involved increases in sophistication and efficacy.