Active surveillance of low-risk papillary thyroid carcinoma: a promising strategy requiring additional evidence

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), the most common malignant tumor of the thyroid, has been criticized as overtreated by some researchers in recent years. Active surveillance (AS) was first proposed at Kuma Hospital in 1993, and popularized in other institutes ever since. We provide a brief review of low-risk PTC active monitoring studies to date, and discuss the advantages of AS and limitations of existing studies. Most papillary thyroid...