Epidemiological Study of Thyroid Carcinoma Using Principal Component Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new epidemiological study of thyroid carcinoma, spread over three years (2005-2008), in a sample of 399 Moroccan patients who underwent total thyroidectomy followed by metabolic radiotherapy with Iodine-131. Indeed, in addition to calculating descriptive statistics, we adopted a classification approach, based on the principal component analysis method, to classify our data. The study focused on three types of the thyroid carcinoma: papillary, follicular and undifferentiated. This method allowed us an epidemiological classification according to four criteria: age, sex, type of carcinoma and the region the subject came from. The results obtained show that papillary carcinoma remains the most dominant form among the three histological types of thyroid cancer, with a high incidence in urban coastal areas. Vesicular carcinoma is also present in these areas with a slightly lower impact. Thus, unlike other cancers, thyroid cancer can be developed in cases of a young age. 54.63% of people affected by this disease are between 20 and 45 years old. Also, this study showed that women with thyroid cancer accounted for 87.97% compared to men (12.03%). Of these, 54.13% are between the ages of 20 and 45, followed by women over the age of 45 (44.44%). While among men, we found that 48.63% of cases are older than 45 years, 47.88% are of average age (between 20 and 45 years) and 3.49% are under 19 years old.