Thyroid Cancer Forum-UK (TCF-UK): a free, independent, multidisciplinary education resource and peer support organisation for consultants.

摘要

Thyroid cancer is relatively rare and, as a result, each thyroid cancer multidisciplinary team deals with a relatively small number of new cases on an annual basis. In many centres, a single clinician specialises in the management of this disease, and there may be no conveniently located work colleague with whom to discuss difficult cases or controversial issues. Level 1 evidence from randomised controlled studies in thyroid cancer management is generally lacking. Therefore, the published US [1,2], UK [3] and European [4] consensus documents and guidelines are based primarily on retrospective studies and expert opinion. This results in considerable variation in practice, both nationally and internationally. In addition, all of these guidelines fail to help when dealing with the management of individual complex cases.The objective for development of the Thyroid Cancer Forum-UK (TCF-UK) was to establish an electronic discussion forum for senior thyroid cancer specialists across the UK in order to facilitate patient management, service delivery, data collection and research.