Clinical and Pathological Findings and Prognostic Factors in a Long Term Follow Up of Patients with Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

Thyroid Cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy, and its incidence is increasing all over the world. It seems that patients’ characteristics, distribution of different histopathological types, its clinical presentation, prognostic factors, and patients’ outcome are significantly from study to study. In this study we examined the above factors in a group of patients with thyroid cancers. In a retrospective setting, medical records of 450 patients with thyroid cancer diagnosed between 1993-2014 in Tabriz Endocrinology Centre were studied and patient’s demographic information, clinical/histopathological findings, treatments, and long-term outcome were recorded. From total number of 450 patients 80.4% were female, the mean age of patients at the time of diagnosis were 37.15±11.72 years (range: 11-74). Solitary thyroid nodule was the most common initial presentation (77.5%), followed by multiple thyroid nodules (20.9%), cervical lymphadenopathy (9.3%), and hoarseness (0.3%). Fine-needle aspiration was carried out in 79.8% of the patients with the following papillary carcinoma in (56.5%), benign nodule (15.3%), follicular carcinoma (12%), suspicious (9.7%), medullary carcinoma (2.2%), Hurtle cell carcinoma (2.2%), unsatisfactory (1.7%), and anaplastic carcinoma (0.3%). In the future workups that were performance the distribution of the final diagnosis was papillary carcinoma (92%), medullary carcinoma (3.8%), hurtle cell carcinoma (2%), follicular carcinoma (2%), and anaplastic carcinoma in (0.2%). Postoperative follow-up was achieved in 90.9% of patients, with a mean duration of 7.40 years. Cure was reported in 91.4%, local metastasis in 5.9%, concomitant local and distant metastases in 2%, and pare distant metastasis in 0.7%. Most aspects of thyroid cancers in the present study were compatible with previous reports. Excellent postoperative survival was an outstanding finding in our study.