Histologic trends in thyroid cancer 1969–1993: A clinico-pathologic analysis of the relative proportion of anaplastic carcinoma of the thyroid

✍ Scribed by Agrawal, Shefali; Rao, Raja S.; Parikh, Deepak M.; Parikh, Hemen K.; Borges, Anita M.; Sampat, Mridula B.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 427 KB
• Volume: 63
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-4790
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-9098(199612)63:4<251::aid-jso7>3.0.co;2-b

✦ Synopsis

Background:

It was observed that new presentations of anaplastic carcinoma of the thyroid had become infrequent in the last two decades.

Methods:

All cases of thyroid cancer seen at our centre between 1969-1993 (n = 2921) were classified as papillary 49%, follicular 34%, medullary 7.5%, anaplastic 4.7%, and other 4.8%. The total number of thyroid cancers show a 3.5-fold rise.

Results:

The differentiated thyroid cancers show a significant rising trend as against the relative proportion of anaplastic carcinoma, which shows a significant decline ( P = 0.002). Clinicopathologic data on 124 patients of anaplastic carcinoma revealed 50% patients had either long-standing goitres, previous thyroid abnormalities, or associated differentiated thyroid carcinoma on histology.

Conclusions:

The decline in the relative proportion of anaplastic carcinoma may in part be explained by the clinicopathologic findings or it may be attributed to histological reclassification.