Study Examines Characteristics of Thyroid Cancer

(Ivanhoe Newswire) –The incidence of thyroid cancer has increased over the past 30 years, but the reason behind the increase remains unclear. Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine/Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pa., sought to compare the clinical and pathologic characteristics of incidentally and non-incidentally discovered thyroid cancer to assess whether the rise in incidence is related to disease detection or actually reflects an increased disease.
Researchers found that patients whose thyroid cancer is incidentally discovered on imaging performed for reasons other than evaluation of the thyroid gland tend to be older, male, and have a higher stage of the disease at diagnosis, but there did not appear to be differences in tumor characteristics such as size and metastases compared with patients whose cancer was found after targeted thyroid evaluation.
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SOURCE: JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg., October 2013