Position paper from the Endocrine Task Force of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) on the management and shared decision making in patients with low-risk micro papillary thyroid carcinoma

The incidence of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) has been increasing world-wide, mostly, as an increase in the incidental detection of micro papillary thyroid carcinomas (microPTCs), many of which are potentially overtreated, as suggested by the unchanged mor-tality. Several international guidelines have suggested a less aggressive approach. More recently, it has been shown that active surveillance or minimally invasive treatments (MIT) are good alternatives for the management of these patients. In this context, patient participa-tion in the decision-making process is paramount. The Endocrine Task Force of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) has undertaken the task to establish consensus and define its position based on the scientific evidence concerning, 1) the current state of diagnostic and management options in microPTCs, including the current opinion of physicians about shared decision making (SDM), 2) the available evidence concern-ing patients' needs and the available decision instruments, and 3) to provide practical sugges-tions for implementation of SDM in this context. To improve SDM and patients' participation, knowledge gaps and research directions were highlighted.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).