[The occurrence of microcarcinomas in the patients after thyroidectomy--retrospective analysis]

Microcarcinomas, minimum carcinomas, are tumours, which are in clinical practice defined as tumours < or = 1 cm in size. WHO defines thyroid microcarcinomas as tumours < or = 2 cm in size, which have different biological behaviour. The aim of the study was to analyze the occurrence of MC in post-operative patients.

Using retrospective analysis we evaluated the occurrence of thyroid microcarcinoma in post-operative patients. Except for basic demographic data, carcinoma size and histological variance, the occurrence of bilateral impairment, presence of multi-focuses and occurrence of regional throat metastases were considerd.

From 2004 to 2008 thyroid surgeries were performed in 400 patients. Microcarcinoma was diagnosed in 34 patients (8.5%), 5 men and 29 women. The average age of patients with microcarcinoma was 52 years, similarly to other patients undergoing surgery. Histologically, 32 cases (94%) were papillary carcinoma, from which 4 cases were papillary follicular and 2 were follicular carcinomas. There were multifocal findings of microcarcinomas in 5 patients (15%), and 4 patients (12%) had bilateral involvement. The average size of the tumours was 5 mm, sd 2.6. Two patients (6%) had metastases in the lymph nodes of the neck. Total thyroidectomies were carried out in 32 patients (94%) and hemithyroidectomies in 2 patients (6%). Five patients (15%), i. e. both patients with metastases in the lymph nodes of the neck and three patients with bilateral multifocal carcinomas underwent postoperative adjuvant radioiodine 131I ablation therapy.

Due to the possibility of the future growth, metastasizing andreoccurrence, microcarcinomas cannot be considered harmless or almost insignificant findings. The increased risk of the MC occurrence was found in chronic lymphoplasmocellular thyroiditis (17%).