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HIFU vs RAI in the Relapsed Graves' Disease

NCT03013257 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 240

Last updated 2022-05-18

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Graves' disease (GD) is an autoimmune thyroid disorder caused by stimulating auto-antibodies to the thyrotrophin (TSH) receptor on thyroid follicular cells. It is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism and approximately 3% of women and 0.5% of men develop GD in their lifetime.

RAI has been shown to be a cost-effective and safe therapy in patients with GD but with some disadvantages. In addition, despite its proven efficacy and safety, many patients do not wish to undergo RAI because of radiation fear and prefer to either continue ATDs or have surgery.

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive procedure that involves the application of a high-energy focused beam for thermal tissue ablation within a targeted zone. Similar to the principle of RAI (i.e. using ionizing radiation to ablate thyroid parenchyma and cause GD remission), we postulated that the heat energy generated from HIFU could also be used to ablate the thyroid parenchyma and cause GD remission. The idea of using heat energy to ablate thyroid parenchyma minimally invasively was recently reported using radiofrequency ablation but to our knowledge, we are one of the first (if not the first) group to propose using HIFU energy to ablate thyroid parenchyma as a definitive treatment for relapsed GD.

Having obtained ethical approval, a pilot study was conducted to examine the efficacy and safety of HIFU as a treatment for relapsed GD. In the pilot study, all patients underwent a safe and successful HIFU ablation for relapsed GD. Based on the results of the pilot study, we hypothesize that a single HIFU treatment to the thyroid gland may be as effective as our standard outpatient fixed-dose of RAI (370MBq) in causing remission of GD at 6-month. If our hypothesis turns out to be true, HIFU could become a treatment option for patients who are indicated for RAI but do not wish to have it because of one reason or another. HIFU appears to induce a faster disease remission and lessen the need of deferring pregnancy and radiation precautions because of the absence of radioactivity.

Conditions

  • Graves Disease

Interventions

DEVICE

Echopulse

Replacing HIFU for the Graves' disease patients who traditionally have RAI to remission

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • The University of Hong Kong

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Hung Hin, Brian Lang, MBBS(Hons) · The University of Hong Kong

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
70 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2017-04-25
Primary Completion
2020-04-30
Completion
2020-06-30

Countries

  • Hong Kong

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT03013257 on ClinicalTrials.gov