Effects of RIT (Radioiodine therapy) on pregnancy and its complication

Background: Differentiated thyroid cancer frequently occurs in women and in fertility ages. One of the corner stones in treating this malignancy is radio-iodine therapy following thyroid resection. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of radio-iodine therapy on fertility rate and pregnancy complications. Also, the association of abortion rate with other underlying factors has been assessed.Methods: This is a retrospective study on 41 patients with differentiated thyroid cancer, experiencing pregnancy after classic treatment (thyroid resection followed by radio iodine therapy). All patients have been signed a written consent form in initial admission to our department. In this study, we asked our patients to fill in a questionnaire about their thyroid cancer and its treatment as well as pregnancy and its complication. As control group with no different mean age, the same check list has also been filled in for patient’s healthy sister too, just related to gravidity and its complications. The complications of pregnancy were registered in these patients and compared with the control group consisted of their healthy sisters. All data has been included in SPSS software and analyzed using logistic regression.Results: No significant difference was noted in the mean between two case (differentiated thyroid cancer) and control groups (P=0.9). The two groups were also statistically similar in terms of pregnancy frequency (P=0.05) and number of alive children (P=0.8). Abortion seems to be the only item in DTC patients which was more than healthy sisters (0.2 versus 0.7) (P=0.003). However, this statistical difference showed no direct relationship with RIT. As in DTC patients before and after RIT, no significant difference has been detected in DTC patients before and after RIT (P=0.48). Birth weight was not statistically different in DTC patients before and after radio iodine therapy (P=0.66) and between DTC patients and their healthy sisters (P=0.2).Conclusion: Radio-iodine therapy for differentiated thyroid carcinoma has neither considerable effect on fertility nor on the frequency of gravity complications.

Keywords:

Pregnancy , Radio-iodine therapy , differentiated thyroid cancer , thyroid carcinoma , abortion