The 2015 Revised American Thyroid Association guidelines for the management of medullary thyroid carcinoma: the "evidence based" refusal to endorse them by EANM due to the "not evidence based" marginalization of the role of Nuclear Medicine
In 2007, the American Thyroid Association (ATA) assembled a group of expert clinicians and basic scientists to evaluate published papers and to develop evidence based guidelines for the diagnosis and management of patients with medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) The first ATA guidelines on the management of patients with MTC were published in 2009 [1] In 2015, ATA released the first revised version of these guidelines [2] in order to assist clinicians of all specialties in the management of these patients. The ATA Board of Directors selected the Task Force members for elaborating these revised guidelines based on published scientific data in the management of MTC, and included international scientists from the fields of endocrinology, ethics, genetics, medical oncology, molecular biology, nuclear medicine, pathology, paediatrics, radiation oncology, and surgery [2] Task Force members reviewed relevant articles on MTC by searching MEDLINE/PubMed from January 1980 to April 2014 using specific MTC related search terms. Task Force members also provided additional relevant articles, book chapters, and other materials. Recommendations were graded using criteria adapted from the United States Preventive Services Task Force Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as were used in the previous MTC guidelines [1, 2] After revisions and critical reviews of a series of drafts, the Task Force developed a final document, and the ATA Board of Directors approved the revised set of guidelines [2] Compared to the earlier version [1] the 2015 revised ATA guidelines on the management of patients with MTC (now consisting of 67 recommendations and related explanatory
European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging