TUESDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Patients treated for thyroid disease with thyroidectomy followed by levothyroxine therapy achieve normal levels of triiodothyronine (T3) and do not need combination therapy, according to research published in the Feb. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Jacqueline Jonklaas, M.D., Ph.D., of Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and colleagues conducted a study of 50 patients aged 18 to 65 years who underwent total thyroidectomy for goiter, benign nodular disease or suspected or confirmed thyroid cancer. To attain normal serum thyroid-stimulating hormone levels in benign thyroid disease patients, and suppressed levels in thyroid cancer patients, they were prescribed levothyroxine after surgery.
When post-thyroidectomy levels of triiodothyronine were compared with pre-thyroidectomy levels, there were no significant decreases, although levels of free levothyroxine were higher. In all, 94 percent of patients achieved thyroid-stimulating hormone levels of 4.5 mIU/L or less, while triiodothyronine levels were lower in the remaining 6 percent.
"Our study
is limited by the fact that we did not document patients' symptoms," the authors write. "If adequate serum triiodothyronine levels were also correlated with patient satisfaction or well-being, this would support the commonly held belief that levothyroxine should remain the standard therapy for hypothyroidism and thyroid cancer."
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