Thyroid cancer. Twenty-three years' experience at Baptist and St. Thomas Hospitals

One hundred fifty-six patients with thyroid cancer were diagnosed and treated at Baptist and St. Thomas Hospitals from 1952 through 1955. Papillary carcinoma, representing 65 to 70 per cent of the total, occurs in all age groups and is the most readily curable of all carcinomas. Slightly more than 50 per cent of our series presented with multinodular goiters. When a male patient has nontoxic nodular goiter, it is three times more likely that he will have cancer of the thyroid than a female patient with a similar goiter. Definitive thyroid surgery was performed by over fifty different surgeons in 143 patients and simultaneous neck dissection in twenty-five. The histologic types ranged from papillary (9 per cent mortality) to anaplastic carcinoma (nearly 100 per cent mortality). Age and sex were shown in our series to affect survival. The female survival figures were better than the male, and older patients fared far worse then younger ones. Survival rates are much improved in patients with cervical node metastases when radical neck dissection is done. Patients reoperated for enlarged nodes located lateral to posterior triangle were found not to have metastatic cancer. Hyperthyroidism was confirmed in 0.25 per cent.