Radioiodine thyroid therapy during COVID-19 times: Uruguayan university center experience

Hyperthyroidism (HT) and differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) are the most frequently requested therapies at our university center. COVID-19 pandemic has placed significant challenges on health systems worldwide. The aim of this study is to show the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic over radioiodine thyroid treatment at our university center. We retrospectively registered and compared the number and type of radioiodine nuclear medicine therapeutic procedures (HT/DTC) performed during these two periods of time as follows: January to December 2019 (pre pandemic) and January 2020 to December 2020 (pandemic). We must acknowledge that the first COVID-19 patient in our country was diagnosed on March 2020 and the number of cases and deaths started to rise after November 2020. During 2019, we performed 30 radioiodine doses for DTC and 71 treatments for HT. During 2020, we performed 20 radioiodine doses for DTC and 44 treatments for HT. We registered a reduction in the number of therapeutic procedures with radioiodine for DTC (33.3%) and HT (61.3%). We noted that the distribution of the administered HT/DTC doses did not correlate with the number of COVID cases and deaths. Our results show the clinical impact of the COVID-19 pandemic over radioiodine thyroid therapy in our center. The reduction in the number of treatments was higher in HT than DTC. As shown COVID-19 has a profound impact on therapy in nuclear medicine and there are many causes ranging to those related to patients, referring physicians, radioiodine availability, and hospital admissions. (author)