[Treatment of Basedow disease with synthetic antithyroid drugs. Evaluation of the effect of the duration of medical treatment on its long term efficacy].

The modalities of Graves' disease by antithyroid drugs are controversial. In particular, the duration of treatment is of great interest. Physicians managing Graves' disease patients have used variable periods of treatment. Some have proposed a few month short time therapy while others recommend an average of two years; others physicians did not used fixed periods but propose various criteria for the follow up (TSH us, early iodine uptake, TSAb, TBIAB); the treatment being stopped when these markers normalized. The present analysis clearly suggests that long term treatment (eighteen months) improves the prognosis of the disease and that longer therapeutic periods are not necessary. For the future we have to identify the best remittance markers, the aim being to propose drug withdrawal according to the individual evolution of these markers.