[Thyroid cancer. Report of 85 cases]

Thyroid cancer is the most frequent endocrine cancer with important implications in terms of diagnosis and treatment.

To report a population of patients with thyroid cancer diagnosed by pathological studies of the surgical piece.

Eighty five patients (68 female) with the definitive diagnosis of thyroid cancer were studied. Clinical, imaginological, cytological and pathological findings were analyzed.

The age range of patients was 10 to 77 years old. Sixty nine patients had ultrasonographic studies which showed a solid nodule in 84%, mixed solid-cystic area in 14.5% and a purely cystic nodule in 1.5% of the cases. Nineteen patients had non specific calcifications. Fine needle aspiration cytology was negative for malignancy in eight patients (false negative rate of 9.9%). The average size of the nodules was of 2.8 +/- 1.6 cm). Six nodules measured less than one cm (microcarcinoma). In the initial surgical procedure, 13 patients had lymph node metastases, 2 of them had a primary tumor of 1 cm and 5 patients had Graves's Disease. Frozen biopsies during operation had 9 false negative results for cancer (10.6%). Pathology showed 64 cases of papillary cancer (75%), 14 of follicular (16.5%), two were Hurthle cell cancer (2.4%), three were medullary (3.5%), and two anaplastic (2.4%).

In our experience, thyroid cancer is more common in women, solid lesions predominate in the ultrasonography and calcifications are frequently found. The tumor size is variable and the most frequent pathological type corresponds to differentiated cancers. Using the definitive pathological study as the standard, the diagnostic sensitivity of fine needle cytology was 90.1%, and of frozen section 89.4%.