Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: Most of the papillary thyroid microcarcinomas (PTMC) are incidentally discovered in pathological examination after the surgery of benign thyroid disorders. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate clinicopathologic features of incidental and nonincidental PTMC.

Material and methods: We evaluated 56 patients with PTMC between 2003 and 2008 at the Division of Endocrinology of the Numune Training and Research Hospital. We analyzed the tumor size, multicentricity, capsular and vascular invasion, lymph node metastases, extrathyroid extension and distant metastases.

Results: Fifty-two of 56 patients were women and 4 were men. Mean age of the patients was 47.5±11.4 years and mean follow-up period was two years. Patients with incidental PTMC (n=25) had been operated on for Graves’ disease in two patients (7.2%), toxic multinodular goiter in one patients (3.6%), multinodular goiter in 22 patients (78.5%) and parathyroid adenom + nodular goitre in three patients (10.7%). There were no differences in the tumor size, multicentricity, capsular and vascular invasion, lymph node metastases, extrathyroid extension and distant metastases between those with incidental PTMC and those with nonincidental PTMC (P=0.179, P=0.451, P=1.00, P=1.00, P=0.275, P=1.00 respectively). There was no extrathyroideal metastases and distant metastases. Nine patients had cervical lymph node metastases at the time of diagnosis (16.1%). Among these patients 3 were incidental, 7 patient’s tumor size were ≥5 mm, 5 patient’s tumor were multicentric and bilateral and 2 patient had capsul invasion.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that there was no significant differences in clinical and histopathological characteristics between incidental and nonincidental PTMC. The presence of cervical lymph node metastases at the time of diagnosis were more common in patients with tumor size ≥5 mm.