An Analysis of Clinical and Pathological Characteristics of 14431 Cases of Thyroid Carcinoma

Abstract

<strong>Objective:</strong> To retrospectively analyze the clinicopathological characteristics of thyroid cancer patients with respect to age, gender, benign lesions, and lymph node metastasis and to explore the clinicopathological features of multifocal and unifocal papillary thyroid carcinoma with cervical lymph node metastasis. <strong>Methods:</strong> The clinicopathological data of 14,431 patients with thyroid cancer who underwent surgical treatment for the first time in the Department of Head and Neck Oncology of our hospital from January 2011 to December 2015 were collected, analyzed, and compared in terms of age, gender, pathological type, benign lesions, and lymph node metastasis. <strong>Results:</strong> Among 14431cases, here were 3259 males and 11172 females, with a male-to-female ratio of 1:3.43. Patients aged 30–59 years accounted for 82.15%. The number of thyroid cancer cases showed an increasing trend year by year (P &lt; 0.001), and papillary carcinoma was the most common (98.47%). Among 14,210 patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma, 4736 cases were in the multi-focus group and 9474 cases were in the single-focus group. Comparison of the pathological characteristics between the two groups showed that the multi-focus group had a higher probability of lymph node metastasis (P &lt; 0.001). A single-focus combination of papillary thyroid carcinoma with benign lesions was more common (P &lt; 0.001), and the difference was statistically significant. Among the cases of multifocal papillary thyroid carcinoma, there were 2812 cases in the multifocal papillary thyroid carcinoma group, and 1924 cases in the unilateral and/or isthmus group. The analysis showed that there were more males, younger patients, more patients with benign lesions, and a higher incidence of unilateral microcarcinoma in the unilateral and/or isthmus multifocal thyroid carcinoma group (P = 0.017). p &lt; 0.001, p &lt; 0.001, and p &lt; 0.001, respectively). There were more patients with cervical lymph node metastasis in the bilateral multifocus group (p = 0.016), and the difference was statistically significant. <strong>Conclusion:</strong> Multiple lesions are one of the clinical features of papillary thyroid carcinoma, which are more prone to cervical lymph node metastasis and more aggressive than single lesions.