Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The increased incidence of thyroid cancer is driven mainly by a large increase in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). The number of patients that succumb to the disease has remained stable. The aim of our study is to analyze the incidence and mortality of thyroid cancer in Ireland.

Methods and design: A retrospective analysis of the National Cancer Registry was undertaken, between 1st of January 1998 and the 31st December 2007. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to determine overall survival using Stata 13 software.

Results: A total of 949 patients were diagnosed, 781 (82.2%) were well-differentiated thyroid cancers (papillary 565, follicular 177, Hurtle cell 39) whilst there were 44 medullary thyroid cancers and 61 anaplastic thyroid cancers. The female to male ratio was 3:1, with a median overall age of 47. This was significantly lower in women at 45, then men at 52 (P=0.0000). The incidence of thyroid cancer increased from 1.43/100 000 to 3.61/100 000. This increase was in the mainly attributed to PTC, rising from 0.63 to 2.46/100 000. The number of deaths from the disease remained stable at 0.63–0.59/100 000. There was no survival difference between those under going total thyroidectomy vs thyroid lobectomy for PTC (hazard ratio 0.868, 95% CI 0.598–1.26, P=0.457).

Conclusions: These results correlate with studies that demonstrate that although an increase in incidence of thyroid has been found, the number of patients dying from the disease has remained stable. This emphasises the need for a new treatment paradigm of risk stratification in order to ensure maximum benefit for the patient.