[Thyroid carcinoma: from diagnosis to therapy]

From 1999 to 2007 we performed 104 surgical operations for thyroid malignancies. Over the same period, 312 patients underwent surgery for benign lesions of the thyroid gland. The patients were subdivided on the basis of age bracket and gender and the distribution of cancer and benign nodules was evaluated. Feasibility and diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonography, scintigraphy and fine needle aspiration cytology were also evaluated. The incidence of thyroid cancer was 25% in all patients. Patients aged < 30 years and > 71 had the highest rate of malignancies: 52% of patients under 30 years of age and 46% over 70 years. Males showed a higher incidence than females. The scintigraphic findings were an area of low uptake in 19 cases (47.5%), an irregular pattern in 12 patients (30%) and a high uptake in 9 cases (22.5%); in 3 of them (7.5%), cancer was in the contralateral lobe and in 2 cases (5%) the dimensions were 8 and 4 mm. Forty-three patients had a single hypoechoic nodule at ultrasonography (41.3%), 3 (3%) were found with hypoechoic nodules containing calcifications and 1 (0.9%) a single anechoic nodule. Fifty-six patients (53.9%) had multiple nodules and 1 (0.9%) was admitted for a latero-cervical lymph node. FNAC revealed 11 cases of fibronectin expression (14.4%): in particular, 3 patients (4%) had cancer in the contralateral lobe and 3 patients (4%) had tumours measuring less than 5 mm. Thyroid surgery is safe and the morbidity rate is about 2%. We observed only one lesion of recurrent nerve (0.5% of patients), temporary recurrent palsy in 2.8% of patients and transient hypocalcaemia in 6.7% of cases.