Clinicopathological Characteristics of Thyroid Cancer in a Saudi Academic Hospital

Background The global incidence of thyroid cancer (TC) has increased significantly over the past decades. In Saudi Arabia, it is the third most common cancer among adults. This study aims to review the clinical and histopathological characteristics of TC in Saudi Arabia and analyze the size trend over the years. Methods We conducted a retrospective chart review of all differentiated and poorly differentiated TC patients following up at a tertiary care center in the Western region of Saudi Arabia. All patients 11 years and older, diagnosed between 2004 - 2018, and with sufficient histopathological data were included. Follicular and poorly differentiated TC were categorized and tumor stage was allocated. We performed descriptive and size trend analysis. Results We had a total of 285 patients who qualified for inclusion. The mean age at diagnosis was 40.6 years, and 81.05% of patients were females. Papillary TC comprised 88.07% of these neoplasms, and most patients (89.12%) were at Stage I. Only papillary TC showed a gender difference in the age of the diagnosis. In men, the mean age at diagnosis of papillary TC was 46.98 ± 15.4 years, while in female patients, it was 39.02 ± 12.8 years (p-value = 0.0001). We did not find a trend toward smaller tumours in the more recent years in comparison to the early years (r = -0.083, p-value = 0.168). Conclusions TC is diagnosed at a younger age and larger sizes in Saudi Arabia in comparison to other countries. A gender difference was only noted with papillary TC in regard to the age of diagnosis. There was no trend toward smaller sizes of TC over the years.