Thyroid Cancer in Isfahan Province, Iran; Prevalence and Demographic Characteristics

Previous studies confirm that thyroid cancer, as the most common endocrine cancer, accounts for about 1% of new malignant diseases all over the world. As thyroid cancer incidence in Iran has changed rapidly over the past years, therefore this study was designed to investigate period prevalence (PP) and incidence rate (Irs.) of thyroid cancer in Isfahan Province, Iran. Recorded data of thyroid cancer were obtained from the Isfahan Cancer Registry at the Deputy of Health. Continuous variables were reported as means ± SD and categorical variables as frequencies and percentages. In order to examine the relationship of PP with age and gender, the t-test and chi-squared test were used, respectively. The PP was defined as the proportion of the total cases over the study years to the population at risk during the same period ×100000. 1545 patients were diagnosed with thyroid cancer, among which 3% were related to death events. The mean (± SD) age of the study subjects was 41.9 ± 15.4 years. For the total population, the PP was calculated as 31.0, accounting for 49.3 versus 13.3 per 100000 for females versus males (P < 0.001). The study of Irs. data showed an increasing trend (P < 0.001) in the number of patients from 2011 to 2015. With a minimum age of three-years-old, in 84% of the patients, the age ranged from 20 to 60 years old. In this study, not only was the period prevalence 3.7 times higher in females than in males but also there was an increase (61.9%) in the incidence of thyroid cancer from the year 2011 to 2015. Based on the findings, however, detection methods of thyroid cancer have improved recently all over of the world, but a well-established classification of the disorder, pharmacotherapy, and surgical plan in the Iranian population can improve the clinical outcome. Further study in these contexts seem to be useful in Isfahan, Iran.