Abstract

Aim: To determine the frequency of thyroid carcinomas in patients who underwent thyroidectomy with preoperative diagnosis of nodular - multinodular - diffuse goitre and thyroid cancer. Material and Method: 918 patients who were operated for nodular, multinodular and diffuse goitre and thyroid cancer in Tepecik Teaching Hospital’s 3rd General Surgery Clinic between January 1998 and December 2008 included into the study. 748 (81.5%) were female and 170 (18.5%) were male. They were analyzed in terms of age, type of surgery, preoperative diagnosis, pathology results, wall-capsule invasion, presence of metastasis and survival retrospectively. Findings: The majority of patients with thyroid cancer were women. The risk of the thyroid cancer was approximately 4.5 - fold lower in men than in women. Although men revealed higher frequency of metastasis compared to women, women constituted the majority of patients with metastasis in our study. The rate of malinancy among patients who underwent surgery with a preliminary diagnosis of multinodular and nodular goitre was 6.7 % and 7 % respectively. In the study, we examined the relationship between benign and malignant thyroid cancers and survival. The mortality rate in patients with malignant thyroid cancer was 3.9 %, but we did not determine any mortality in patients with benign thyroid cancer. Conclusion: Contemporary medical approach requires to distinguish benign nodules from suspected malignant nodules before surgery. This would help to avoid unnecessary surgery as well as to determine the strategy during the operation.