To evaluate the incidence, behavior, clinical outcome and identify possible predictive factors of the association between thyroid cancer (TC) and Graves’ disease (GD), we reviewed the records from all patients submitted to thyroidectomy for treatment of GD between 01/79 and 11/02 from 2 university hospitals. Histology of the excised specimens identified TC in 7 of the 341 patients (2.1%). In the group with TC, age varied from 19 to 50 years (median: 29) and in those without TC, from 13 to 79 years (median: 34), which were not significantly different. There were 293 women (87.7%) and 41 men (12.3%) in the non-TC group and 5 women (71.5%) and 2 men (28.5%) in the TC group. By histology, all 7 cases of TC were papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC): one with a multicentric PTC without extra-thyroidal involvement, two with the follicular variant of PTC (with 8 and 25mm diameter) but no capsular involvement, one with classic PTC (with 15mm diameter), and the remaining 3 with microcarcinomas (<10mm). Patients were followed from 6 to 16 years and none had local recurrence or distant metastasis. Our data showed an incidence of TC in patients submitted to surgery for GD concordant with those previously reported. Tumors were not more aggressive than usual, probably because of the high frequency of occult microcarcinomas.
Graves’ disease; Thyroid; Thyroid carcinoma; Neoplasms; Thyroidectomy
