HISTOPATHOLOGICAl CHARACTERISTICS OF THYROID TUMORS AMONG SUDANESE PATIENTS

Abstract

This is a descriptive retrospective study about thyroid tumors in Sudanese patients. It was carried out in the period from January 2006 to December 2008.The study was conducted in the three main histopathology laboratories in Sudan, the National Health Laboratory (NHL), Radiation and Isotope Center-Khartoum (RICK), and Soba University Hospital (SOH). The study aimed at determining the histopathological pattern of thyroid tumors and to show the distribution of age, sex, risk factors, origin, ethnic groups, and clinical presentation of these tumors. Ninety seven (97) cases of thyroid tumors were analyzed in the study. The age of the patients ranged between 12 to 80 years with a mean of 37.54+14.72 years. The commonest age group was 30 to <40 years (27.8%).Females constituted 86.6% of the patients, with a male to female ratio of 1: 6.5. The study revealed that the prevalence of follicular adenoma in goitrous patients was 7.5%, and that of malignant thyroid tumors was 2.9%. Follicular adenoma was the most common thyroid tumor constituting 72.2% of all thyroid tumors. Papillary carcinoma came next (12.4%) then follicular carcinoma (9.3%). Medullary carcinoma (3.1%) and anaplastic carcinoma (3.1%). Follicular adenoma occurred most commonly in adults aged 20 to <50 years (78.6%).The male to female ratio was 1: 7.75. The age group > 20 to < 50 was the commonest age group affected by malignant thyroid tumors (55.5%). No malignant thyroid tumors was diagnosed in age group <11 years. As a conclusion, the study showed that thyroid cancers occurred most commonly in young and middle aged adults and was rare in children. Regarding the grading of thyroid malignancies 52% of thyroid cancers in the study were of low grade malignancy, 37% were intermediate grade malignancy and 11.1% were of high grade malignancy. The study revealed that the percentage of malignancy diagnosed by FNABs was 35.7%. Benign category constituted 50% and the indeterminate/suspicious category constituted 14.3%. The evaluation of thyroid tumors according to geographic regions, among ethnic groups and the correlation with risk factors could not be obtained as these data were not documented in the request forms. This entails urgent intervention otherwise thyroid tumor epidemiology will continue to be deficient. When all the findings in the study are compared together, it can be concluded that the histological pattern of thyroid tumors, the sex and age distributions in the study tend to correspond with studies in other countries.