Prevalence and types of thyroid malignancies among thyroid enlarged patients in Gondar, Northwest Ethiopia: a three years institution based retrospective study

BACKGROUND: Thyroid carcinoma is the leading cause of death among endocrine cancers second to carcinoma of the ovary. Now a day, the incidence of thyroid malignancy is increasing more rapidly than any other malignancy. But data on the prevalence of thyroid malignancy among thyroid enlarged patients were very limited in the study area. Therefore, this study was aimed to determine the prevalence of thyroid malignancies among thyroid enlarged patients. METHODS: Data of 846 thyroid enlarged patients registered from January 2010 to February 2013 were collected from fine needle aspirate cytology and histology (for inconclusive and the neoplastic cases) log books. It was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Odds ratio was calculated to assess the presence and strength of association between the outcome variable and the explanatory variables. P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Among the 846 thyroid enlarged patients, 62(7.3%) were confirmed to have malignancy. Among malignancies papillary thyroid carcinoma was the leading, 28 (45.2%), followed by follicular thyroid carcinoma, 18 (29%), and the least type of thyroid malignancies were medullary thyroid carcinoma and hurtle cell carcinoma, each accounts 1 (1.6%). Severe form of thyroid malignancy, undifferentiated thyroid carcinoma, was also accounted significant proportion, 12.9%. Older patients having an age of greater than 60 years and patients with solitary thyroid enlargement were more affected by malignancy compared to the reference age group, 11–20 years and diffused type of enlargement respectively (AOR: 10.96 (3.15-38.1; AOR: 8.82 (3.49-22.32) respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of thyroid malignancy was significantly high and the leading type of malignancy was papillary thyroid carcinoma followed by follicular thyroid carcinoma. Thyroid malignancy was found to have statistically significant association with type of enlargement and age.